











SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


SARAH AND HER 
DAUGHTER 

BY 

BERTHA PEARL Jfl tr*v- 

i I 



New York 

THOMAS SELTZER 
1920 



Copyright, 1920, by 
THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. 


First printing April, 1920 
Second printing April, 1920 



JUL 1 2 1920 


Printed in the United States of America 
All rights reserved 

© Cl, A 5 7 1 7 0 5 


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CONTENTS 


BOOK I 

Sarah 

PART PAGE 

I Elias 7 

II The Cellar 133 

III Bands 187 

BOOK II 

Minnie 

I Independence 223 

II Sarah’s Daughter 329 


Dedicated to 

Henrietta Szold and her Sister Adele 


BOOK I 
SARAH 















/ 










< 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


PART I 
ELIAS 
I 

From the back door of a front tenement in New York's 
East Side a little girl came skipping into the contracted 
square courtyard separating it from the rear tenement. 
A small mongrel was worrying the end of a rag in her 
hand, and, for a while, the two played tug-of-war in 
the offal-littered yard. Presently a boy, somewhat older 
than the girl, emerged from the rear tenement. 

“Hello, Minn!” 

“Hello, Abie!” 

Abie, the helmet of his cap sitting rakishly over his 
left ear, his hands in his pockets, walked leisurely to 
the middle of the yard. Minnie gave Abie a measur- 
ing look, like a player in a game awaiting a decisive move 
from his opponent, then, somewhat self-consciously, 
went on pretending to tear the rag away from Foxy, 
who worried it with short, make-believe vicious snarls. 

Abie watched the sport. 

“Minn,” he said. 

She held Foxy off. “Wha’ do you wan*?” 

“You wanna play grocery?” 

Minnie looked at Abie shyly. 

“Pom wanna?” 

“Yeh” 

“Aw right.” 

Minnie skipped to a corner of the yard where she 

7 


8 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


busied herself with housekeeping details. Once or twice 
she ordered Foxy to get out of her way, muttering aloud 
to herself : “Childrens are such a bother in a house 
when you got a lot a work to do.” 

From his many pockets Abie assembled marbles to 
be sold as potatoes, placed one piece of wood see-saw 
over another for scales, and scraping up some of the 
plenteous dirt put it aside to be sold as flour, sugar, or 
salt. When all was ready, he called to Minnie: 

“Now you dass come.” 

Minnie heaved a “mama’s” breath, a breath closely 
related to a sigh. “Here, Foxy!” she called, and locked 
an imaginary door. Next she hung an imaginary bas- 
ket on her arm and proceeded on a shopping expedition 
as Mrs. Mira Cohen, a friend of her mother’s. 

“Good morning,” said the groceryman. 

“Good morning,” Mrs. Cohen replied tartly. Mrs. 
Mira Cohen was known to be a crank. “‘You got 
sugar ?” 

“Yeh, fresh sugar. You wan’ a pound?” the grocery- 
man inquired. 

“No, a paper,” replied Mrs. Cohen. A “paper,” in 
the linguistic mysteries of the East Side, differentiates 
a bag of three and a half pounds from a bag of one 
pound. 

The groceryman proceeded to weigh the sugar. As 
the pieces of wood were too narrow, the scales proved 
provokingly incompetent. After several efforts he felt 
justified in assuming he had weighed a “paper.” Not 
so the thrifty Mrs. Cohen. 

“That ain’t no paper,” said she contemptuously. 

“’Tain’t? ’Tis!” the groceryman contradicted. 

“Uh! Tain’t!” repeated Mrs. Cohen, making a ges* 


ELIAS 


9 


ture as if to throw the sugar off the scales. The gro- 
cery man laid a hand of protection on his wares. A mo- 
ment’s tension, and Mrs. Cohen said: 

“Wha’ do you know?” 

“My dear lady,” rejoined the groceryman, maintain- 
ing his dignity, “it’s a paper.” He looked over Mrs. 
Cohen’s shoulder at an imaginary customer. “Wha’ do 
you wan’?” he asked. 

Mrs. Cohen had no intention of yielding; she placed 
her arms akimbo and said in a raised voice, stressing 
each word: 

“That ain’t no paper.” Suddenly Mrs. Cohen turned 
into Minnie and added : “Yeh, my papa kept a grocery, 
not yourn. I know.” 

The groceryman paid no attention to this personal 
turn. 

“My dear lady,” he said, “wha’ do you wan’ I should 
lose money on you? That’s a paper.” 

Minnie turned into cranky Mrs. Cohen again. 

“You can paper me from to-day up till to-morrow, that 
ain’t no paper by me.” 

The groceryman of the neighborhood having the repu- 
tation of being “independent,” Abie saw fit to tell Mrs. 
Cohen that if she did not like it, she could lump it. 
This roused Mrs. Cohen to a corresponding measure 
of defiance. 

“I will!” she announced shrilly, stamping her foot. 
“And I’ll never buy for another penny here ’cause you’re 
a cheat!” 

Minnie’s acting was so realistic that Abie applied the 
epithet to himself. Instantly he turned into the normal 
boy and made as if to spit in her face. Thinking better 
of it, however, he merely taunted: 


IO 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Fights !” 

Mrs. Mira Cohen vanished from the yard. In her 
stead stood an irresolute, impotent little girl with tears 
welling up in gray, dark-lashed eyes too large for her 
thin-featured face. 

Abie knew that his vengeance could not have been 
more complete had he actually used the last resort of 
the infuriated — had he spat in her face. He was glad. 

The tears rolled down Minnie’s face. She dashed 
them from her cheeks with the back of her hand and 
sucked them from her upper lip. 

Stooping, she picked up Foxy and left the yard. 

“Fights!” It was a cruel wound to a child’s pride 
in her family. Something vaguely told Minnie that in 
spite of the sordidness of her home life, her mama and 
her papa were made of finer material than Abie’s mama 
and papa, or Mira Cohen and her husband. “Fights!” 
had not been a reference to any pugnacious quality in 
Minnie, but to the relations existing between her father 
and mother. 

Beside Minnie, who was eight, the juvenile end of 
the Mendel family comprised Jacob aged ten, Ida nearly 
seven, and the baby, endearingly called Bubbele, aged 
three. The authors of their beings were two people 
whose alliance was never formed with heaven’s fore- 
thought ; if it was, there is something terribly wrong with 
heaven. 

Abie’s mother was janitress of the twin tenements. 
When her home duties interfered with her janitor’s 
work, Abie helped her. Lighting the gas in the halls 
was his regular job. A few days before, while perform- 
ing this duty, the thing had occurred which provoked 
the taunt of “Fights.” 


ELIAS 


ii 


Abie, making his way up the dark, rickety stairs of 
the front tenement, stumbled over something on the 
lowest step of the fourth flight. He struck a match, 
kindled his lighter, and beheld Minnie Mendel. She 
was in tears and looked much older than her years. 

“Say!” said Abie. 

No answer. 

“Wot’s a madder?” 

From the floor above came a woman’s voice vulgarly 
shrill and loud: 

“I can’t stand it any longer!” Abie and Minnie 
heard distinctly. “I can’t stand it any longer! The 
children go hungry and naked, and you hold on to your 
Sabbath! I cannot stand it any longer.” 

Minnie lay across the step completely barring Abie’s 
way. 

“I gotta light the lights,” he said, “get out o’ the 
way.” 

Minnie moved to one side, and Abie proceeded to 
the top floor. In the front tenement he worked from 
up down ; in the rear tenement from down up, finishing 
on the top floor where he lived. 

When Abie, on the way back, reached the step just 
above Minnie, a man’s voice sounded, calm but not 
defiant : 

“I cannot work on the Sabbath. You can if you 
want to.” 

“Oh-h-h!” shrieked the woman, infuriated impotence 
in her cry. 

Abie was terribly interested. The gas lighter accen- 
tuating the darkness at his feet, he did not see that 
Minnie was again lying crosswise on the step below. 
He stumbled over her a second time, now with dis- 


12 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


astrous results. Bump went his head on the railing. 
The shock and the quick pain gave Abie the blind im- 
pulse to visit corporal punishment upon the cause, and 
he was about to kick Minnie lying at his feet, when he 
checked himself and burst out instead: 

“Fights!” 

Minnie cringed and said nothing. 

That violent shriek seemed to have concluded the 
altercation. Abie waited a moment or two, then went 
on about his business. 

Presently the door above opened. Minnie saw her 
father come slowly, awkwardly, down the stairs. His 
head was bowed, his eyes were fixed on his feet. Two 
or three times he muttered as he shook his head : 

“She has no shame, she has no shame. The neigh- 
bors could have heard her.” 

Minnie drew to the rear of the hall. Her father 
passed without seeing her. 

On the floor below he was seized with a fit of cough- 
ing. Minnie ran to the balustrade. She saw him use 
his handkerchief, straighten his hat, and walk out. 

II 

When the Mendels arrived in America from a small 
village in the Baltic provinces, their nearest of kin met 
in consultation to decide what the father should do 
for a living. As the family had come safeguarded 
by nearly a thousand dollars, it was thought advisable 
that he go into business for himself, especially as it 
would also solve the difficulty of the Sabbath observance. 
Elias Mendel was a pious orthodox Jew. The relatives 
had, of course, learned to renounce much of their piety 


ELIAS 


13 


by this time ; but they had not forgotten their own 
spiritual struggle and were tolerant of Elias. “In time 
he will get ausgegreent” (lose the greenness of the new- 
comer), they said. 

The next question was, what business to put Elias 
into. The decision was a soda-water stand, with a 
show-case for candies, chewing-gum, cigars and cigar- 
ettes. About a month later Elias, the pious Jew, with 
the thoughtful face of one who has spent long hours 
in the study of the Law, was standing in a booth in 
front of a drug store on Pike Street, mixing red syrups 
and yellow syrups with “sizzling” water to answer 
the outlandish calls for vanilla, strawberry, ginger, 
raspberry. 

“A language!” Elias Mendel marvelled, and shrugged 
his shoulders. 

The stand did not yield the big revenue predicted. 
The promoters of the plan accounted for the failure by 
Elias Mendel^ overscrupulous honesty. Moreover, “a 
stand must be kept open on a Saturday. People who 
go to another stand on a Saturday, go to it on a Sun- 
day too, and on a Monday, and on a Tuesday.” A true 
deduction. 

But Elias Mendel held to his Sabbath. 

The next venture was a grocery store on Forsyth 
Street. Elias gave full measure, and, of course, kept 
closed on Saturday. So how could it pay? 

“He is crazy honest,” said the relatives* in denuncia- 
tion. “And his Sabbath kills him.” 

The Mendel capital dwindled to a shadow of its 
former self ; and finally even the shadow faded away. 
There followed a period of short-lived jobs. In quick 
succession Elias was a paper-box maker, a bastings 


H 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


puller, a ladies' shirtwaist sleeve maker. Because he 
was wholly untrained and was granted the privilege of 
Sabbath observance, each position yielded him a weekly 
wage that brought his family closer and closer to the 
verge of starvation. 

Days set in when the children asked for bread and 
Sarah had none to give. 

In the old country Elias, though he had owned a 
dry-goods store, which had maintained his family amply, 
had been able to give up a goodly portion of each day 
to prayer and Talmudic study in the synagogue, as he 
had had the aid not only of Sarah but also of Sarah’s 
parents, who had migrated with their daughter from 
Memel at the time of her marriage. Never had he 
dreamed of such a change. To work a whole day and 
that there should be talk even of violating the Sabbath! 
It was unheard of. America was a queer country. 

Sarah had no such scruples with regard to the Sab- 
bath observance, though she was not wholly irreligious. 
Early in life she had come under the influence of a 
“freethinker” lover, a young man who with the assur- 
ance of the immature, waived all faith aside with 
“ Narrishkeit , narrishkeit ” (foolishness) ! He had bent 
her point of view, though not to absolute skepticism, 
yet to uncertainty, to which, however, as long as she 
remained in her father’s home, she never gave voice. 
Women of Sarah’s generation and bringing up, in nor- 
mal circumstances, do not pit their opinions against 
those of their men folk. When they disagree, they 
bow their heads and say nothing. 

Sarah’s parents, declaring her marriage with Leopold 
Pollack would bring them to an early grave, forced her 
to marry, at seventeen, Elias, pious and uncouth and as 


ELIAS 


*5 

unsuited to her romantic temperament as water to ft re. 

By degrees she began to realize more and more fully 
that her life was always to be what it was; she was 
ever to be the keeper of Elias’s home, nothing else, 
and she began to nurture resentment and bitterness. 
The longer she drew comparisons the more convinced 
she became that Elias, for all his piety, was no whit 
better a man than the freethinker she had been made 
to give up. 

Yet, while her parents, whom she loved and felt con- 
sideration for, were with her, she exercised self-control 
and maintained, on the whole, an agreeable manner. But 
a discerning person would have observed that she had 
periods of apparently unwarranted thoughtfulness and 
often avoided meeting her parents’ as well as Elias’s 
eyes when they spoke to her. Then, too, she was ir- 
ritable with the children on insufficient provocation. But 
no one gave Sarah any special observation except to 
ask now and again what in God’s name she wanted of 
the children since they were only children. Sarah would 
turn away, say nothing, and soon resume her manner 
of quiet agreeableness. 

Sarah’s parents died, one following the other quickly. 
Then came the emigration, which tore her from the 
surroundings in which she might have continued to live 
a comparatively serene life, and transferred her to the 
soil of poverty, in which self-control, like so many other 
virtues, is doomed to wither. 

Ill 

A few days after Minnie’s and Abie’s encounter in 
the yard, Mira Cohen came to visit Sarah. Always 
swift in her movements, she seemed now, as she en- 


1 6 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

tered the room, actually to be whipping the air. She 
was a tall, lean woman, with scanty red hair drawn 
away from her forehead and ears into a tight knot on 
the peak of her head. 

Something was up. Sarah could read it in her eyes. 
Mira let herself down on the lounge emphatically and 
looked Sarah squarely in the eye. 

“Nu, whs macht ihr?” (How are you?) she began 
with decision. 

Sarah raised her eyebrows and looked away. 

Though much alike, the two women were a curious 
study in contrast. Sarah, too, was tall and thin; there 
were reddish glints in her straight hair. One could tell 
at a glance that both women were harassed and em- 
bittered. But Sarah's pale, thin lips quivered, while 
Mira's tight-set jaw seemed to challenge God and man 
to dare to do worse by her. In Sarah's large gray eyes 
were timidity and diffidence. Mira’s small blue eyes 
darted hard determination and self-assurance. 

Sarah looked to the floor as though seeking inspira- 
tion for the right answer to Mira’s quite conventional 
question. “How should one be ?” she finally brought out. 
“If one lives and one walks and one talks, then one 
is all right! No?” Tears gathered in her eyes, her 
heart was heavy with its burdens. 

It crossed Mira's mind that the woman was a fool. 
There were plenty of remedies in America to resort 
to when one had a conscienceless husband. Indeed, that 
devotion of Elias's to the Sabbath was a fine affecta- 
tion. The truth was, he was lazy. Accustomed to his 
“if-I-don't-come-to-day, I'll-come-to-morrow” way in the 
old country, he seized upon any pretext to live in the 
same way here. Would she stand for such conduct? 


ELIAS 1 7 

Indeed not. Her mind travelled with self -approbation 
to a scene between herself and her husband. 

Though Sarah and Mira were friends, Mira had no 
patience with Sarah's out-of-place refinement, and Sarah 
innately withdrew from Mira’s ever-ready advice and 
incessant activity. Mira was always discovering a 
cheaper fish store, a place where one could get coal for 
next to nothing, a pushcart of “remlets” (remnants), or 
a dispensary; and she was forever giving advice to all 
sorts of people about all sorts of things, from how to set 
dough to when to call in the police. 

Mira straightened herself, so that she looked like a 
red-knobbed stick on Sarah’s lounge. 

“Nu, God be thanked, I fixed him!” The announce- 
ment was what her determined manner had been setting 
the stage for. 

“Fixed him?” asked Sarah shyly, who sensed that 
Mira was referring to her drinking husband. Though 
her friend’s confidential tone invited questioning, she 
shrank from being intrusive. 

“Yes, I fixed him. Long enough I stood it. But no 
more. I made up my mind there would have to be 
an end before death. If I waited for God to wake up 
from His dreams, it would take to my death, so I made 
my own finish.” Women of the Ghetto so invariably 
accept their lot in life as final “until death ” that Mira 
felt she was the founder of a new creed. 

Through Sarah’s heart darted envy. Here was a 
woman who always found the proper remedy. Why 
could she not do the same? 

“He promised me on his knees he would abstain, and 
yet after that he came home drunk — that dear husband 
of mine. I said to myself: ‘That settles it; now there 


i8 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

must be an end. Rabbi Sunder’s daughter it does not 
suit to be the wife of a drunkard/ ” At the recollection 
of her aristocratic paternal ancestry, tears of resentment 
came to Mira’s eyes. “Why of all women it should 
be just my luck to have a drunkard for a husband, I 
don’t know.” She wiped her eyes and shrugged her 
bony shoulders. “God forgive me — but He really does 
not know His business,” she averred. A shade of a 
smile flitted over their faces. After a brief silence’ 
Mira went on rehashing her grievances. 

“It drowns his worries. Worries ! Porries ! What 
worries has he? Nebich, he cannot work in the shop. 
The air chokes him. He wants to live in a house with 
a grassy yard like at home. No other way suits him.” 
Mira’s breath came in excited puffs; beads of perspira- 
tion appeared on her long forehead. 

Sarah, all impatience to know what remedy this 
woman, who, like herself, was encumbered with an 
unmanageable husband, had found, was passionately 
wishing she would end the prelude and tell the story. 
Mira, detecting the inquisitive look in her eyes, moved 
to the edge of the lounge. 

“Across the street from the house I live in,” she be- 
gan, leaning over closer to Sarah, “is Essick Market 

Court ” She waited to see whether Sarah remerm 

bered the building; on the way to Mira’s home one 
must pass it. “That’s a place for just such women 
as me — and you, too.” Seeing that Sarah dropped her 
eyes, Mira repeated: “Yes, you, too. Why should we 
fool ourselves? It’s between friends. What’s the dif- 
ference if a husband doesn’t support because he drinks 
or because he is in love with the Sabbath? If a hus- 
band doesn’t support, he doesn’t support.” 


ELIAS 


19 

Sarah quivered inwardly. It was a rude touch, which 
she both resented and welcomed. 

"I made him go to the Essick Market Court. I told 
him if he would not go willingly, I would call in a 

policeman. He took and he went and he stood ” she 

punctuated with her forefinger in midair, “like a cow- 
ard before the judge ; and when he heard that he would 
be arrested if he got drunk once more, he trembled like 
a frightened little boy.” Mira seemed now to have 
reached the end of the drama in her heart and relax- 
ing as in relief added: “It's now a week and — only no 
evil eye should befall him — he hasn't been drunk once.” 

Both women silently regarded each other like seller 
and buyer when the salesman has exhausted his talking 
points and waits for the other to make up his mind. 

The door opened and Elias entered. Seeing Mira he 
gave a perfunctory greeting. Mira rose hastily. God 
in heaven ! she had stayed longer than she intended. 
Elias was at home ! It must be late ! Hastily she gath- 
ered up her belongings. Sarah handed her a parcel which 
she seemed to have forgotten, but Mira, giving Elias a 
sharp glance, said to Sarah: 

“No, it's for you.” 

In his shabby dark gray suit, his hair tousled, his 
beard untrimmed, Elias, dusty and worn, looked an 
object that has been trampled upon and abused. His 
manner and figure exuded such fatigue that its heavi- 
ness spread like a contagion through the room. Mira 
correctly concluded that he had been out job-hunting 
the whole day without success because of the Sabbath* 
She soliloquized : “A man should be so crazy religious ! 
A woman should allow herself to be so ill-treated !” She 
had no patience with either of them. If the woman were 


20 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


only energetic and did something, took him to the court, 
for instance, had him frightened once and for all, then 
they would get somewhere. He would make up his 
mind that God does not pay wages for piety, that chil- 
dren do not grow like branches of a tree, but must be 
fed, that a wife is more a man’s responsibility than 
God Himself, that in short, a man must go and do and 
make. 

As Sarah led her irate visitor to the door and out 
into the hall for the inevitable appendage to a woman’s 
visit — a little more talk — Mira expressed her thoughts. 

Sarah listened, becoming more and more impressed 
with the enormity of the abuse she and her children 
were suffering at Elias’s pious hands. Any expression 
of regret from him, she felt, even if couched in such 
mean terms as “dog. devil, I am sorry my piety makes 
it hard for us,” would have satisfied her. But he never 
so much as said “my poor children;” he thought only 
of himself and his piety, of his heaven not to be missed 
later. Sarah’s indignation waxed hotter and hotter. 

Returning to the room she at once opened Mira’s 
parcel. Bread and meat! Mira’s leavings! God’s re- 
ward for piety! 

“Look,” she said to Elias, obviously controlling her 
anger. “If Mira had not brought this, the children would 
have nothing to eat.” Elias made no reply. There was 
no need to ask whether he had got work. His dejec- 
tion allowed of no optimism. Sarah stood for a mo- 
ment irresolute, then drew closer to him. “Tell me,” 
she began as if propounding a mathmetical problem, “do 
you think this can go on very much longer? As your 
wife, do you think I deserve no consideration? And the 
children — don’t you ever intend to realize that they must 


ELIAS 21 

be fed, that children do not grow like branches on a 
tree ?” 

Elias rose from his chair. “Don’t begin all over 
again,” he pleaded gently, his eyes moist with beseeching. 

For one instant Sarah was held by pity ; then carried 
away by anger, she hurled at him: 

"I'll fix you, I’ll fix you! Let all the neighbors 
listen to my loud voice, let all the relatives consider 
us a disgrace. If you will not work to support your 
children, you are no better than Mira’s drunken hus- 
band, and I’ll drag you to court as she dragged him. 
I don’t care for anything, I’ll fix you, I’ll fix you!” 

Elias was dazed by the volley of words. He had no 
idea what Sarah was talking about — “drunken” — 
“court” — “fix.” He begged her to control herself. She 
grew only the more furious. Elias picked up his hat 
and went out. 


IV 

For days Mira’s words went round and round in 
Sarah’s mind. Each day her soul drew a little nearer 
to sanctioning the course of conduct Mira had advised. 
“He deserves it, he deserves it! He deserves anything ! 
A man who will let his children starve deserves the 
worst that can happen to him,” she said over and over 
again to herself. 

There were moments, however, when the very fact 
that she had this weapon to fall back upon lulled her 
anger to rest. She admitted to herself that Elias, after 
all, was concerned about his children; that he simply 
had a mistaken sense of loyalty to his God. She would 


22 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


sigh and her naturally shy spirit: would draw away 
from the profane measure of revenge that she was 
contemplating. . . . But what was she to do? Where 
was it leading to? They could not live on Mira’s leav- 
ings of bread and meat ! A man who did not support his 
family for love of his Sabbath was as bad as a drunkard: 

Day after day Elias returned the same dusty gray fig- 
ure, his dragging step in the hall forever announcing fail- 
ure. At each futile attempt, Sarah’s resentment blazed 
up and dying down left as a residue a more crystallized 
determination to seek redress. At last, tried to the ut- 
most, she broke away from her timidity and tolerance, 
and, raising her head high, jumped into the fray of the 
more sophisticated. 


Y 

One Friday morning, after many rehearsals, Minnie 
said to her father: 

“Papa, mama said you should meet Mira’s husband by 
his house, and he will take you to w r ork by buttonholes 
in his shop.” 

Pretending she could market more economically for 
the Sabbath at an early hour, Sarah had left at eight 
o’clock. Jacob had gone out at the same time ostensibly 
for school. A little later Minnie also departed. The 
last to go was Elias. 

At the corner of the street near the courthouse Sarah 
and Jacob waited for Minnie ; then the three waited for 
Elias. Sarah thought with bitter sarcasm : “He hurries !” 

She was as agitated as though she were the victim, 
not the aggressor. Her heart hammered at her ribs, 
her temples throbbed, her mouth and lips were dry, her 


ELIAS 


23 


tongue was pasty. She glanced nervously from one 
corner of the street to the other, one moment indignant 
at Elias’s delay, the next moment hoping he would not 
come. Her reason for seeking refuge in the Essex 
Market Court was forgotten. She was conscious only 
of something strange to be accomplished, of a pounding 
heart, and a brain throbbing and muddled. 

Minnie, the first to spy Elias approaching at a slow, 
even gait, his eyes lowered, whispered: 

“Uh, ma, there’s pa!” 

Sarah gathered her shawl nervously about her and 
looked around. 

Self-control is characteristic of Talmud-trained Jews. 
Though Elias was astonished to see his wife and his 
two children, he betrayed no emotion. He drew toward 
them at the same even, slow pace. He suspected there 
was something wrong but he asked quite calmly: 

“What is the matter?” 

Without preliminaries, to all appearance aggressive, in 
reality almost collapsing from agitation, Sarah told her 
husband “it would have to end.” Once for all it would 
have to be settled who was right, he or she, whether 
the children ought or ought not to starve. She would 
“make a scene to bring all the people together” if he 
did not go to court with her and learn that a man who 
did not support his family because of piety was no 
better than a drunkard. 

Elias listened dumfounded. He recalled the words, 
“court,” “drunken,” “fix,” to which he had attached no 
actual significance. Could he be hearing aright? Was 
the woman in front of him his wife? Were the two 
children his children? He found nothing to say in 
reply. Finally he gathered his wits together. 


24 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“You must be crazy. It cannot be otherwise.” He 
shrugged his shoulders as if to say that even if Sarah 
were insane, such conduct was incomprehensible. Sud- 
denly the face of a yellow cat, which had been the 
family pet in Russia, danced irritatingly before his eyes. 
He dropped his lids to blot out the image. Then came 
a fleeting vision of Minnie as a baby. He glanced at 
the child. She, glimpsing his look, moved closer to 
her mother, raising her thumb to her mouth. An ex- 
quisite pain pierced Elias’s father-heart. 

In just a moment, Elias’s beard became two beards 
to Sarah, then three beards, and one again, and his 
person very clear. Sarah’s resolution gained strength* 
in that moment. “Once for all !” she said emphatically. 
Her loud voice intimidated them all. Simultaneously and 
without definite purpose they proceeded slowly forward. 

“Can it be that this is Sarah?” Elias thought. In 
some unaccountable way a tender feeling for his wife 
entered his heart. He stepped nearer and took her by 
the elbow. “Come, my wife, this is for people’s laugh- 
ter” ( far leitische Gelechter). He spoke gently and tried 
to lead her away. This only irritated Sarah more. 
“You dare!” she shouted. Elias looked timidly about 
to see if anyone had heard. A scene on the street was 
above all to be avoided. They continued slowly to 
approach the courthouse. 

When they reached the door, each waited for the 
other to lead the way. Presently an officer appeared and 
gruffly ordered them to “move on.” Frightened, they 
proceeded as one person to enter. 

Returning from her marketing, Abie’s mother, who 
was not Christianly disposed toward Sarah, just then 
passed the courthouse. She saw the Mendels disap- 


ELIAS 


25 


pearing through the doorway. She stopped short in 
astonishment. “That they fight” she thought, “who 
does not know thatl But to go to court!” She shrug- 
ged her shoulders and walked on. “A coarse woman, 
that Mrs. Mendel !” she murmured to herself. “But 
as long as she speaks German! every sin of hers is nul- 
lified. Yiddish past ihr nit” (Yiddish is not good 
enough for her). 

A long wait on shabby benches in a musty room — a 
period of unreality to them all — then Sarah and the two 
children were hustled to one side of a platform; Elias 
was placed on the other side, an interpreter between. 

Sarah looked nervously about. For an instant she 
permitted her eyes to rest on Elias; he looked ghastly. 
A sharp pain smote her heart. “Woe is me !” she cried 
inaudibly. Such is that type of rebel, they can con- 
tinue to prosecute by tongue or deed apparently with- 
out mercy, while they are tortured by the voice of 
conscience. 

It was indeed a tragic Mendel group which faced the 
Law that morning: 

Sarah, her heart torn. 

Elias, sorrowful and ashamed. 

Minnie, alarmed and unsteady on her feet. 

Jacob, shy, his cap pulled down over his tear-filled 
eyes. 

The first to be called was Elias. Sarah, whose shak- 
ing knees almost gave way, looked about the room. 
She observed a woman with disheveled hair, who sat 
with her mouth wide open. Bringing her unsteady hand 
up to her own hair she adjusted a few loose strands. 
Elias stammered out his name with a swift look at his 
wife. A wave of intense bitterness surged through 


26 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


his being, and hot tears came to his eyes. At the same 
moment Sarah’s heart again cried : “Woe is me !” Until 
her turn came, she heard not another word. 

“What is your name?” 

Sarah raised her chest under her shawl and drew the 
shawl closer about her thin shoulders. Suddenly the 
room seemed to be in utter darkness. She blinked and 
steadied herself against the railing. Then composing 
herself, she answered huskily: “Sarah Mendel.” Her 
'name was entered in the formidable-looking book. She 
was now called upon to state her “case.” 

She ran the back of her hand over her neck, and made 
an effort to say something, but her voice seemed gone. 
She looked down at the floor then cleared her throat. 
The interpreter told her to speak Yiddish, he would ex- 
plain to the judge. Hearing the word “judge,” Sarah 
looked up at that impressive personage and smiled stu- 
pidly. The court grew impatient. The interpreter told 
her to “hurry.” Thus recalled to action, Sarah ner- 
vously put her hand to her wrist, slowly pushed up 
her sleeve and exposed bruises caused by the stove door 
falling shut on her arm. 

“Does he hit you?” the interpreter inquired. Sarah 
nodded her head. 

“He don’ give us nothin’ to eat,” little Minnie shyly 
repeated the sentence her mother had rehearsed with 
her, her thumb again in her mouth, her head lowered, 
her eyes raised to the judge. 

There followed some writing and an authoritative 
command : 

“Ten days.” 

Sarah, dazed, stupefied, limp, passed her hand over 
her eyes. On removing it she saw her husband in the 


ELIAS 


27 


grasp of two uniformed men. She shrieked like a mad 
woman. Arrested ! Ten days ! Elias arrested ! No, 
that was not what she had intended. She had only 
wished him frightened, as Mira’s husband had been — 
then he would work on the Sabbath. 

Her lamentations broke on unattending ears. The 
law was not to be trifled with. 

Another “case” was being tried. With little ceremony 
Sarah and her children were dumped outdoors where 
the sun shone unconcernedly. Sarah wrung her hands 
and moaned, “Woe is me! Woe is me!” the two chil- 
dren wailing with her. 


VI 

Mrs. Ratkin said to her husband: 

“That Mendel woman — I should live so and be 
well — she has sent her husband ‘over the water.’* 
When I came home from Sabbath marketing I saw her 
and her husband and Jakie and Minnie going into Essick 
Market Court. That she and her husband fight — who 
does not know that? But to go to court, and to get 
her husband arrested! That is already unsuited to Jew- 
ish people.” Mrs. Ratkin served her husband with her 
early morning thoughts. “A coarse woman, that Mrs. 
Mendel. But as long as she speaks German. Yiddish 
past ihr nit. And such a one gets her husband arrested ! 
Does that woman deserve to live?” Though her hus- 
band was listening quite attentively, open-mouthed like 
a child afflicted with adenoids, she spoke as if he were 
an opponent to be argued into her way of thinking. 


* Sing-Sing. 


28 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Abie, too, was an attentive listener. The moment his 
mother, engrossed in her narrative, became aware of this 
fact, she pounced upon him. 

“Why did you listen ?” Then, realizing that her ques- 
tion was foolish, she had recourse to exhortation. “For 
God’s sake, obey your mother for once and do not 
tell anyone what I told papa.” She conceived the no- 
tion that if Sarah knew she knew, Sarah would tell 
the landlord and she would lose her janitorship. Those 
whom life hounds see trouble lurking in the remotest 
corners. Poor Sarah would never have dreamed of ap- 
proaching the landlord. The landlord indeed! An im- 
posing personage, big-bellied and solemn, of whom 
Sarah and the other tenants stood immensely in awe. 
He never greeted them, nor so much as took notice of 
their existence except to come to their doors once a 
month, solemn as the occasion itself, and demand the 
rent. 

Eleven days later when Abie was sent by his mother 
on his gas-lighting job, he struck. The instrument which 
his father (of a mechanical turn, though pursuing chiefly 
tfie trade of rag-picker) had devised for turning the cock 
of the gas-jet had not been working properly for the past 
few days, and Abie had been compelled, as he had been 
before his father’s invention, to lug a chair along. He 
had given his mother fair warning, but she had not been 
able to prevail upon her husband to shake off his tired- 
ness long enough to fix the tin tube now too large for 
the candle. 

“Go, Abie, go. It’s dark already,” pleaded his 
mother. 


ELIAS 29 

“I won’t, ! ” said Abie again. “The candle conies all 
the time out.” 

Mrs. Ratkin compressed the tin tube and urged 
him to try now. At the door the candle fell out. His 
mother, angered, grabbed the lighter impatiently from 
his hand, inserted the candle with vehemence and pro- 
ceeded with Abie. She was resolved to show him that 
all instruments work well always, if one only applies 
oneself diligently enough; if one is not a lazy loafer, 
in short. 

In the lowest hall of the front tenement, she encoun- 
tered Sarah, who started, turned back abruptly as though 
she had forgotten something, and then faced round again 
and stammered out a greeting. 

“What are you so excited about?” asked Mrs. Ratkin, 
who knew Elias had returned that afternoon. When she 
had seen him from the yard, she had looked twice, thrice, 
to be certain her eyes did not deceive her. 

Sarah gave a shy, self-conscious smile. 

“My husband — came back from Brooklyn to-day.” 
She colored deeply. “He went because he was sick.” 
She made a hasty move toward the stairs. Mounting 
a few steps, she added: “I just went out to buy him 
some supper.” 

“Upon my word,” Mrs. Ratkin confided to her hus- 
band in the evening, “that woman is a liar to her bones ! 
She tells me her husband was sick in Brooklyn. Sick! 
One says nothing then. Why was it necessary for her 
to tell a lie?” She turned to Abie, dread of contamina- 
tion entering her heart. “Better, my son, spend your 
time helping your mother than playing round with that 
Minnie girl. A homely one — fui!” She turned to her 


30 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


husband again. “Who knows — children — they grow up 
before one realizes it. God forbid !” 

Jewish parents always provide careers for their chil- 
dren up to and including matrimony, never discouraged 
in the face of Fate’s perpetual contrariness. 

“S’ a madder, ma?” asked Abie. “Wuz Mr. Mendel 
arrested? I ain’ gonna tell.” He placed his hand over 
his heart in religious pledge of holiday honor. “Tell 
me,” he urged. 

“Go, go!” said Mrs. Ratkin to quash his curiosity. 
Then deeming further precaution necessary she added: 
“I can, God forbid, lose the place here if that woman 
begins to tell people or the landlord that I gossip. 
She is such a liar. Who knows what she would not 
say if one word got to her! You hear!” she now 
shouted at Abie, “you should never dare to say a word.” 

Abie acknowledged that the warning had reached his 
ears. However, he had no intention of giving up Minnie 
as a playfellow or a quarrelfellow. In fact, a very differ- 
ent chain of thoughts was set going in his mind. These 
eventually linked themselves with an event of grave im- 
portance to the Ratkin family. 

VII 

Had Elias Mendel been released immediately upon 
his wife’s pleading, he would undoubtedly have been 
welcomed back by her as one who has been restored to 
life from the dead; and temporarily all his sins would 
have been forgotten. But only temporarily. His reli- 
gious fanaticism would doubtless soon again have 
aroused Sarah’s hostility and again there would have 


ELIAS 


3 T 


set in the same ugly struggle. As it was, the ten days 
gave each a chance to reflect upon the tragic reality 
of their sordid relationship. 

The period of reflection sobered Sarah, who tortured 
herself with dire speculations as to where and under 
what terrible circumstances the law was keeping her hus- 
band in confinement. She grew to hate herself for the 
enormous breach of decency she had perpetrated. Now 
and then she found solace in disclaiming responsibility 
for the outcome since it had been so entirely different 
from her intentions, but the solace would not last long. 
“He was arrested just the same,” she would charge 
herself, “like any common peasant at home.” Elias 
would be justified in hating her the remainder of his 
days. When she remembered his decent Talmudic 
friends “at home” and wondered what they would think 
of her conduct, she felt a sinking of her heart. As for 
her parents, she was sure they would “turn in their 
graves.” . . Like a scientist studying cause and 
effect she consciously now, for the first time, thought 
over their life together and saw her disloyalty. “I mar- 
ried him; I must stand his idiosyncrasies as I would 
stand a disease. To cut up capers in public at this 
day — with four children — that is indeed leitische Ge- 
lechter ” She felt herself drawn back as by a firm hand 
to her old, decent self ; and rational plans for solving 
their difficulties came to her. Jacob could sell papers, 
Minnie could help him, she herself could peddle can- 
dles, stationery — do something. 

She gave Jacob five cents immediately to invest in 
ten papers, and he and Minnie sold them at a profit 
of five cents. 


32 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Elias, in his prison cell, little divining Sarah’s change 
of heart, came to the conclusion that she was capable 
of lying, was vindictive, and disliked him far more than 
he had ever imagined. She was an outrageous apostate. 
There was but one decent thing to do, divorce her. The 
children? Ah, the children! At this point Elias al- 
ways sighed and got no further. It was, however, with 
the firm intention of approaching his wife as a man 
who will have nothing more to do with her that he 
turned his steps homeward the day of his release. 

It was late in the afternoon when he reached home. 
A melancholy twilight and quiet filled the room. None 
of the children were at home. On the bed in a dark 
air-tight bedroom — a denial of our civilization — lay Foxy, 
the dog, unconcernedly asleep. Sarah was sitting at one 
of the two windows with “leitische Gelechter, leitische 
Gelechter!” running through her tired mind, and every 
now and then a sigh of dull resignation escaping from 
her. She was not expecting her husband. 

When the door opened she turned her head, thinking 
it was one of the children. At sight of Elias her heart 
bounded. She made a successful effort to hide her 
emotion. Nothing but the flutter of her eyelids could 
have revealed her agitation even to the keenest observer. 
Though her impulse was to rise, she remained seated. 
Her husband greeted her while he still held the door 
in his hand. Sarah answered perfunctorily, turning her 
head quickly to look out of the window. Elias stepped 
into the room. He coughed, removed his hat, and wip- 
ing the perspiration from his forehead, seated himself 
on the lounge. He coughed again. Then, examining his 
fingernails, he asked for the children. 

Sarah’s heart was going nervously. She moved un- 


ELIAS 


33 


easily on her chair. To cover her tremulousness she 
put a note of impatience into her answer, “They are 
playing on the street.” She continued to look through 
the window. 

To her husband, in his present frame of mind, hef 
tone suggested: “Why do you not ask whether they 
are hungry?” Poor Sarah! Somehow she now felt 
she must conceal her regret. Elias consequently re- 
flected: “The sooner we are divorced the better for all 
of us, then I will go back ‘home/ ” He sighed. Sarah 
impulsively turned eyes of concern upon him. Just 
then there was a commotion in the hall. Bursting open 
the door, Ida and Bubbele laughing merrily fell over 
each other into the room. Upon seeing their father, 
they instantly disentangled themselves and rushed at 
him, enthusiastically shouting: “Papa, papa!” Never be- 
fore had their father paid so long a visit to their uncle 
in Brooklyn. 

Sarah rose from her seat, stood a moment irresolute, 
then moved toward the stove, where filling the tea kettle 
gave her an excuse for standing with her back to the 
group. Another moments thought, and she decided to 
go downstairs. She went back to her chair by the win- 
dow to get her shawl, which had fallen to the floor, and 
put it about her shoulders. 

“Where you gone, mama?” Bubbele piped, staying 
the movement of her little hand to her father’s beard. 
Elias had taken both children on his knees. 

Sarah avoided looking at the group. Inventing the 
need for some groceries, she said impatiently that she 
was going out. At that moment the door opened. It 
was Minnie. Instantly seeing her father she stopped 
short on the threshold, undecided whether to enter or 
turn back. Elias looked at her, his head half raised. 


34 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Nu, daughter ?” he said, rising as he seated Ida and 
Bubbele on the lounge. 

Minnie looked at her mother, whose eyes, she saw 
were moist. Quickly laying her head against the hand 
holding the knob, she burst into tears. Sarah brushed 
past the child and out, banging the door. Minnie stood 
weeping in the middle of the room. Elias called to her 
again. She flew to him and cried in abandonment : 
“Oo, papa ! Oo, papa !” as she nestled her small body 
against the man’s bony frame. Elias clumsily stroked 
her hair. “Be still, my child,” he urged gently, “be 
still.” By degrees Minnie’s outburst subsided. 

While Elias was still pacifying her, Jacob entered. 
Seeing his father he quickly moved into the bedroom, 
where he threw his cap on a chair and stirred about 
as if attending to things. Then he sat down upon 
the bed, on which Foxy still lay asleep. Jacob won- 
dered hastily about his father and where his mother 
was. That his father should be petting Minnie aston- 
ished him. He wished his mother would come back. 
He was anxious for an explanation. ... In the 
meantime he stroked Foxy’s fur. Several times the 
dog moved uncomfortably under the hand; finally he 
awoke, and shaking himself as does a swimmer to throw 
off the wet, sniffed at Jacob investigatingly. In a mo- 
ment he became aware of Elias’s presence, and with one 
excited move bounded into the other room and licked 
and wagged Elias a boisterous welcome. Tears came to 
Elias Mendel’s eyes. 

Foxy gone, Jacob began twirling his cap, dropped 
it again, and sat with clasped knees contemplating the 
ceiling. Elias, though he glanced stealthily into the 
bedroom, did not call to his son, somehow, from Jacob, 
expecting unsolicited action. 


ELIAS 


35 


Sarah on the street bethought herself that Elias, as 
well as the children, would really be hungry and con- 
verted her fictitious errand into a real one, buying a 
can of salmon, a loaf of bread and some onions on 
trust. It was returning that she met Mrs. Ratkin and 
Abie. 

As she reentered the room, jealousy shot through her 
heart at the sight of Minnie in her father's arms. “Small 
as she is," she thought, “so false — first for me and now 
for him." Poor Sarah! Minnie's innocent demonstra- 
tiveness toward her father, she construed as a reprimand 
to herself. Lowering her head, she began undoing the 
packages. Becoming conscious of Jacob's presence, she 
called to him. 

Jacob had risen from the bed on hearing his mother 
enter, but at her summons, though ready to respond, he 
pretended he had to pick things up from the floor. The 
truth was, he hated to face his father. Finally, how- 
ever, he lounged in, looking steadily toward his mother. 
Sarah asked how many papers he had sold that day. 
“Sold them all," he answered fumbling in his pockets 
for the afternoon’s yield. Elias, in quick comprehen- 
sion, smiled as he watched his son hand ten pennies to 
Sarah. Though the sight saddened him, he made an 
attempt at jocularity and naturalness. 

“You have become a business man in a week, my 
son ?” 

Jacob gave his father an impulsive glance and smiled. 
Ida and Bubbele, observing from their mother's profile 
that she, too, was smiling, burst into laughter. The ten- 
sion was temporarily relieved. Yet throughout the meal 
there was a feeling of constraint upon all except the 
two youngest children, who kept on laughing and chat- 
tering. Minnie's little body often heaved with short 


36 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


sob-sighs — the kind that come after much crying. She 
cast covert glances now at her father, now at her mother. 
Elias and Sarah exchanged occasional remarks, always 
avoiding each other’s eyes. Jacob ate his share of the 
meal with stubbornly lowered head. He reflected chiefly 
about Minnie. “First she goes and says to the judge, 
and then she cries!” He held his sister in contempt. 

The meal was soon over. Bubbele asked to be put 
on the lounge where she soon fell asleep. The three 
other children, first Jacob, then Minnie and Ida went to 
play on the street. East Side children have no regular 
hours for sleep. 

When the door closed on their noisy exit, Sarah 
rose to clear away the few plates. Service with the 
Mendels was a simple affair, each helping himself from 
a common dish. Elias seated himself at the window 
and looked into the yard. He wiped the perspiration 
from his face and contemplated his handkerchief. He 
cleared his throat, rose from his chair, then sat down 
again as if to settle himself more comfortably, though 
really in an effort to overcome his nervousness. 

Sarah, with her back turned, kept up the appearance 
of being busied with the dishes. Her hands were trem- 
bling too greatly for work. Somehow she was sure that 
her husband meant to suggest a plan that would clash 
with hers. 

“Sarah,” Elias, clearing his throat, finally called to 
her. 

Sarah pretended not to hear above the running of the 
water. 

Elias called again, this time a little louder. The room 
turned dark to Sarah, her knees shook, she held on 
to the side of the sink. When Elias called to her a 
third time, she could no longer evade him. She felt 


ELIAS 


37 


herself grow limp and faint, and turned not to face 
him, but to seek a chair, and Elias, who was not look- 
ing at her, took it for granted that she had seated her- 
self preparatory to a discussion. Sarah passed her hand 
over her eyes. Elias examined his fingernails, then 
began clumsily and not at all as he had intended: 

“Sarah, what are we to do ?” 

She made no reply. Elias repeated the question. 

Hardly conscious of what she was saying, Sarah an- 
swered slowly, as though she were thinking deeply, 
as though her suggestions were the inspiration of the 
moment (such are the masquerades of nervousness). 

“Jacob will keep on selling papers — I will get some- 
thing to do to help along — God will help.” 

There was a moment's pause ; each became aware that 
the other had spoken. Elias wondered if he had heard 
aright. He asked Sarah what she had said. Automatic- 
ally she repeated: 

“Jacob will keep on selling papers — I will get some- 
thing to do to help along — God will help.” 

They looked at each other. Elias saw Sarah's deathly 
pallor and was aghast. He attempted to rise from his 
seat. Neither spoke for a moment. Then Elias, sink- 
ing back in his chair, put his head in the cup of his 
palms and wept like a child. Sarah raised a corner of 
her soiled apron to her eyes, and she, too, wept. 

VIII 

Elias remained without work; for the arrest neither 
cured him of his piety nor taught him a trade. His 
daily plodding rounds in search of a job only brought 
him home exhausted and heavier hearted. 


38 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


It was a period of great trial to both Elias and Sarah, 
whose reconciliation was followed by a sickening self- 
consciousness inevitable with sensitive people. Gray 
hairs appeared in Elias’s dark beard, darker rings en- 
circled his eyes. Of the two, he made the greater at- 
tempt to bridge over the awkwardness. While Sarah 
went about doing the housework, he would relate in- 
cidents of the day and talk of this thing or that, and 
often read aloud snatches of news from the daily paper. 
If anything he said required an answer, Sarah would 
respond with an effort at naturalness and her old-time 
agreeableness. Generally she would avoid looking at 
him, and sometimes, when he addressed her suddenly, 
she would start nervously and reply with irritability. 
Instantly, however, she would check herself and cover 
her embarrassment by quickly finding something to do. 

There were days when Elias returning from his expedi- 
tions complained of feeling ill. “Sick!” Sarah would 
think sarcastically and resentfully, against the better 
self which struggled for existence. She had a constant 
pain in her side, yet she said nothing. Never before 
had Elias complained, and Sarah knew he would not 
complain now without good cause; but want is a wind 
that blows justice back to heaven. 

One evening Elias returned home jubilant. He had 
found work in a cigarette factory; the boss was an 
orthodox Jew who had not even raised the Sabbath ques- 
tion, and had actually of his own accord offered to pay 
Elias his dream of a maximum salary — eight dollars a 
week. 

Elias told of this good fortune with boyish enthusi- 
asm. The rings under his eyes seemed to turn a shade 
darker from his great joy. Sarah was glad, yet when 


ELIAS 


39 


Elias in his high spirits attempted to kiss her, she im- 
petuously pushed him away and turned her back. Elias 
flushed. 

Sarah went to the sink and began preparing the sup- 
per — a feast of bread and sausages taken on trust from 
the delicatessen proprietor, whose patience in the matter 
of extending credit had been less tried in these days' 
than that of the grocer and butcher. The man had 
given her the eatables with marked kindness, and Sarah 
groping her way up the dark tenement stairs had shed 
tears because of his courtesy. 

Elias reseated himself on the lounge. Several times 
he told Ida and Bubbele, who were playing on the floor, 
not to make so much noise. As soon as Sarah left the 
sink, he rose to wash himself. Sarah, anticipating his 
requirements, rummaged in a box in the bedroom for 
a towel and brought it to him. He took it and thanked 
her. They avoided each other’s eyes. 

As Sarah began the simple setting of the table, Minnie 
came in. 

“Sh’ll I help you, ma?” she asked promptly. 

“No, your face is dirty. Wash your face and comb 
your hair,” Sarah said in a somewhat irritated tone, 
for, though she refused the help, she resented having 
to do all the work herself. 

Soon the family was ready for the meal. Elias told 
Jacob, who sat in a corner reading, to put his book down 
and come to the table. Sarah was the last to seat 
herself. She had first to wash and comb Bubbele. 

During the meal, Minnie gave Sarah a message from 
Mira Cohen, whom she had met on the street. 

“She’s gonna see you to-night,” the child told her 
mother. 


40 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“To-night, here?” Elias asked. He did not like Mira. 

“Did she say she is coming here or that I should 
go to her?” inquired Sarah, who inferred that the mes- 
sage had something to do with Mira's promise to give 
her the address of a place where she could apply for 
work. 

“Yeh — no — I mean she is coming here,” answered 
Minnie, passing the cuff of her sleeve across her nose. 
The father felt called upon to mend his daughter's ways. 

“Yeh — no ” he mimicked, intending to add that a 

young woman of eight should know that a corner of a 
towel and not the cuff of a sleeve is used for wiping 
noses. A laugh from Bubbele diverted him. His mim- 
icking had struck her as a huge joke. She began mim- 
icking too. Ida took up the refrain, and soon both 
children were crying “Yeh — no ” and laughing so in- 

fectiously that the others were compelled to join in the 
fun. Sarah, however, did not enter into the spirit of 
gaiety. “See, children, stop,” she coaxed. 

“Let the children have their fun,” begged Elias. 
However, the young ones settled quietly down to eat- 
ing again. Yet the bit of merriment had cleared the 
atmosphere of the former constraint. Elias felt he might 
again talk about his new work. For the present, he 
explained, he would have to do various small tasks, 
such as sweeping the place, cleaning the tables, run- 
ning out for lunches for the employees. The boss, he 
said, promised to advance him if he proved himself 
capable — even to the place of foreman. Elias accounted 
for the boss’s generosity by the fact that they were com- 
patriots, although the boss had left the “other side” 
many years earlier. “He is an unusually nice man,” 
Elias remarked in conclusion. 


ELIAS 


4i 

Sarah, interested, listened attentively, for the first time 
free of agonizing self-consciousness. 

Supper was soon over. Jacob was the first to rise. 
When Elias questioned him, he said he intended to go 
and change a book at the library. 

‘‘Take me along,” pleaded Minnie, as her brother 
picked up his book and cap. 

“No,” said Elias somewhat authoritatively, “you stay 
at home and help your mother. Time enough when 
you get older to go to libraries.” 

Minnie stuck her thumb in her mouth and looked over 
quickly at her mother. “Mama, sh’ll I help?” 

“No, go,” Sarah said, resentment, however, flashing 
up in her heart again. She was tired, and the task of 
washing the dishes, few as they were, and tidying the 
room loomed up as gigantic. 

“No, Minnele, you help your mother,” Elias insisted. 

Though Minnie was willing, Sarah sent her off. The 
children went out together, Jacob grumbling: “That one 
always has to run along like a little worm. Makes me 
sick.” 

The incident created a slight tension between Sarah 
and Elias as if something had gone wrong between them. 
When he rose to help, she turned on him with impulsive 
impatience. 

“Go sit down. So long ” she broke off and turned 

away quickly. It had been on her lips to say : “So long 
you never thought of helping and now suddenly you 
do.” 

Elias, divining the unspoken, became embarrassed ; the 
color left his face. The occasional underlying irrita- 
tion in Sarah’s manner made him more miserable than 
had her former full-worded outbursts. He felt the 


42 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


struggle beneath it. Elias was in love with the Sarah 
he had married, and when she in the least resembled 
that old self, he loved her still. 

Without comment he walked with bowed head to the 
lounge, and called Ida and Bubbele, who came running. 
Stretching himself out at full length, he perched Bubbele 
on his body and told Ida to be seated on the least dilapi- 
dated spot on the lounge; some parts of the Mendel 
lounge could stand very little strain and could give its 
burden very great discomfort. 

“Ah, pa, tell us a story,” Ida begged. 

“Yeh,” Bubbele chimed in, pulling her father’s 
beard. 

“Don’ pull papa’s beard,” Ida chided Bubbele. 

Elias told of the coming of the Messiah. Though 
the children had heard the story countless times before, 
they listened again with the keenest interest. When 
the point of the narrative was reached that promised 
the coming of the Messiah, Ida questioned wonderingly, 
as she always did: “And will he come on a great big 
mountain and blow a horn, and will all the dead peo- 
ples wake up and walk like us ?” “Yes,” Elias promised. 
Ida’s face expressed incredulity, and Bubbele, who got 
her cue from Ida, put on a similar expression. 

Elias looked over at Sarah standing at the sink. She 
was thinking: “How people, grown up like Elias, can 
believe all that, I do not understand. God forgive me 
if I sin.” 

Here, without the preliminary of knocking, Mira en- 
tered, wiping her face, panting for breath, complaining, 
simultaneously, of the four flights of stairs, and seating 
herself. 

“Nu, how are you?” she began with her customary 


ELIAS 


43 

salutation, addressing Sarah. Sarah stole a glance at 
Elias. 

'‘How I am? I am,” she said with a fatalistic ges- 
ture characteristic of her race — a resigned lift of the 
brow and a slight sidewise ducking of the head. 

Mira’s look implied: “That does not tell me much.” 
So Sarah added quietly: “How should one be? Alive. 
What else is necessary?” She placed a dish on the shelf 
above the sink and picked up the third and last dish 
still to be dried. Elias, sitting up on the lounge, looked 
at the two women. 

“That’s a truthful truth,” Mira vouchsafed in agree- 
ment. There was general repressed smiling. 

Elias, in a talkative mood, told Mira of his day’s suc- 
cess. Mira offered congratulations, which, while sin- 
cere, were also sarcastic. “By cigarettes,” she said, “one 
can work one’s self up without limit,” and then told 
of a man she knew who now had a cigarette factory of 
his own, though he had begun just as low as Elias. In 
fact, so well was he doing that he had no eyes and no 
use for acquaintances of less prosperous days. Sarah 
and Elias listened attentively, their hearts fanned by a 
new hope as is a dying fire by a mild breeze. Timidly, 
Elias raised his eyes and looked at Sarah, who at last 
had seated herself. There was silence for a moment 
or two, the quiet dolefully emphasized by the ticking 
of a one-legged clock which lay on its side on the 
wooden shelf over the sink. 

Bubbele yawned sleepily. “Put her to bed,” Sarah 
asked gently of Elias. He was touched. Lifting the 
child from the floor, he kissed her tenderly, and placed 
her on the bed in the one other room of their home. 
The next moment Ida also was yawning. “Go to bed, 
too, childie,” he said. She rose and went. Elias picked 


44 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


up his coat. Sarah glanced at him inquiringly. “Pm 
going down to buy cigarettes,” he explained. 

“Soon you will not need to buy cigarettes,” Mira said 
jocosely, “you will have a place of your own.” Sarah 
fumbled with her apron strings. Elias, embarrassed, said 
good night quietly and went out. 

Mira turned eagerly to Sarah. “You see, when he 
tried, he found.” she said. 

“He tried before, too,” Sarah replied with impulsive 
irritation, and immediately averted her eyes in annoy- 
ance that she had betrayed herself. The truth was, 
secretly Sarah bore Mira a grudge, as if Mira were 
to blame that the Law had been less stringent with her 
husband than with Sarah’s. 

In theory Mira was averse to an outsider’s inter- 
ference, however well meant, between man and wife, es- 
pecially if either were inclined to resent it. So she 
said no more on the subject, though Sarah, she thought, 
might at least be grateful to her for the good influence 
the arrest had had upon Elias, since otherwise he would 
doubtless still be an idler. Tactfully she veered to the 
purpose of her visit. She supposed, she said, Sarah 
would not need work now. Sarah hastily assured her 
to the contrary, for eight dollars a week was scarcely 
enough to maintain six people; and besides there were 
debts at the butcher’s and the grocer’s “over her head 
also the children needed shoes. Mira wisely remarked 
that the poor man’s blessing was the fact that he had 
feet to boot. They both smiled. Mira then gave Sarah 
the promised address. It was the People’s Charities 
on Mustend Street. 

“Charities?” Sarah inquired timidly, with a nervous 
jerk of her left shoulder. She was alarmed; charity 
did not gibe with her idea of respectability. 


ELIAS 


45 


“It is not like asking for money. It is only work 
you want. Do not be foolish.” The issue not being 
husbands, Mira could, with impunity, be her compelling 
self. 

Sarah lowered her head. She was always helpless 
when Mira waxed certain. The subject was dismissed. 
They talked of other things. When, at ten o'clock, 
Mira rose to go, Sarah accompanied her to the door, 
where she plucked up the courage to ask: 

“Maybe you can go with me?" 

“To the Charities?” 

Sarah nodded affirmatively. 

“Sure, sure.” 

They agreed to leave Mira's house at ten the next 
morning. Out of gratitude Sarah momentarily was con- 
vinced that Mira had meant well when she had sug- 
gested the Essex Market Court as a remedial measure 
in the case of Elias and that the outcome had been 
due to her own black luck. 

Elias, on his return, found Sarah combing her hair. 
He was in good spirits. “You have pretty hair, Sarah,” 
he said smiling kindly. 

Sarah turned her back. She did not like compliments 
from Elias, and was glad of Minnie's and Jacob's en- 
trance. Jacob had taken two books out of the library, 
one of which Minnie was carrying, proud as a peacock. 
Elias interrupted the child in her stream of prattle to 
remind her of her nightly task; — to bring the two cots 
in from the outside hall and set them up in the room- 
of-all-affairs. One was for Jacob, the other for Sarah 
and Minnie. The bed in the bedroom was occupied by 
Elias and the two younger children. While Minnie 
went about her work, Elias undressed Bubbele and Ida, 


46 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


and Sarah removed bedding from the bed for the cots. 
When the cots were set up, Minnie helped Sarah dis- 
tribute the bedding. 

“To-morrow when you come from school,” the mother 
whispered as together they spread a sheet, “step into 
the grocery store and bring a bottle of kerosene.” She 
sighed heavily. Time and again she had tried to ex- 
terminate the bedbugs and the roaches. 

“Uh, yeh, ma, Jacob scratched hisself the whole day,” 
Minnie piped alertly and appealed to Jacob for corro- 
boration. “Ain* it?” 

“What?” 

“That you was ate up by the bedbugs.” 

Jacob was provoked with her. She had invalidated his 
greater maturity by her juvenile presence beside him in 
the library. 

“All the time she tells — I never saw such a — such 

a ” His stammering made Minnie and even Sarah 

laugh. 

Elias, already in bed beside Ida and Bubbele, called 
out that it was late, and as he would have to get up 
early in the morning, would they quiet down immedi- 
ately. Sarah turned the gas low and whispered to the 
children to be still. In the dark the three undressed 
and crawled into their humble beds. 

Minnie was the first to fall asleep. Then Jacob. Sarah 
lay thinking of her tasks of the morrow — the Charities 
— the bed cleaning 

Then she, too, fell asleep. 

Late in the night Sarah awoke. Almost at the same 
moment Jacob also awoke. He whispered in a wail : 
“Uh, mama, it scratches me so!” 

Sarah sat up in her cot. 

“What shall I do — what shall I do !” she moaned, 


ELIAS 


47 


wringing her hands. Then she checked herself. She 
must not disturb Minnie. “Go to sleep, sonnie,” she 
coaxed, “go to sleep. To-morrow I will clean again. 
Go to sleep.” As if to inspire the boy to sleep she 
herself lay down. Jacob followed her example. When 
all was quiet, Elias turned restlessly in bed once, twice — 
but not again. 

“I clean and I clean,” Sarah wailed to herself. “The 
place is rotten — the very wood is rotten ” 

Meanwhile Jacob was taken with a large idea. He 
knew his mother would not refuse him anything at this 
hour of the night when she was anxious for quiet 
above everything else. He whispered, as if taking up 
the broken thread of a conversation: 

“So will you give me a quarter to-morrow for papers, 
mama? I kin sell more — like the other boys.” 

Sarah smiled. Her son’s shrewdness did not escape 
her. He had petitioned for the same amount of con- 
fidence in his salesman’s ability in the daytime, under 
ordinary circumstances, and she had refused to give it. 
The boy’s assumption was correct; she could not argue 
with him now. 

“All right,” she said. 

“Remember, you promised.” 

“All right. Go to sleep.” 

Jacob turned on his side; though he closed his eyes, 
he did not fall asleep until dawn. Sarah slept not 


In the morning Elias said to Sarah: 

“Last night, Sarah, I was greatly bothered. 
Kerosene — ” 

Sarah cut him short. 


48 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“I have spilled kerosene without measure; it does 
not help. Warm nights like last night nothing helps. 
The place is rotten, the wood, the floor. The woman 
next door, Mrs. Cohen upstairs, everybody has the same 
trouble.” Realizing, to her mortification, that she had 
displayed temper, she lowered her head and continued 
more quietly: “Yesterday I found white worms, a whole 
swarm of them under the sink.” 

Her evident distress went to Elias’s heart. He was 
sorry he had spoken. He turned to prepare for his 
morning prayers. 

Sarah roused Minnie and Jacob. The cots had to be 
removed that there might be passing room. Jacob rose 
reluctantly ; he seemed only just to have fallen asleep. 
With Minnie helping, Sarah carried the bedding into the 
other room. Minnie then dragged the cots out to the hall. 
Jacob, as always, concerned himself only with his own 
person. The accepted position of boys in Jewish homes 
is that of Lords of the Domain. 

Minnie dressed hurriedly. Her next duty was to go 
to the grocery store for breakfast rolls. She needed no 
instructions as to the kind or quantity to procure. Each 
of the children ate one cruller for breakfast, Elias two 
flat buns with grated onions embedded in the top, Sarah 
a plain water roll. The sum to be expended was five 
cents. 

Sarah, meanwhile, placed a pot of water on the gas 
stove and threw in a handful of chicory. Rolls and 
“coffee” had been the family’s morning repast for over 
two years, with a deviation to nothing at all in harder 
times. 

As Sarah turned from the stove to pick up the things 
strewn about the room, her eyes fell on Jacob. His 


ELIAS 


49 


sallowness smote her heart. “He must have been eaten 
up,” she wailed inwardly. Why was such terrible luck 
coming to her innocent children ! 

Minnie, having raced up the stairs, burst into the 
room all out of breath. 

“Look, look, how she runs!” Sarah cried to Elias; 
then to Minnie : “Why do you always run ?” and to her- 
self, moaning: “How thin and pale she, too, looks! They 
are all coming to nothing.” She turned away to hide her 
tears. 

Minnie, who took Sarah's lament for a scolding, de- 
fended herself. 

“Papa said he must be in the shop by seven.” 

Elias, engaged in the part of the morning prayer at 
which speech is forbidden, shook his head to deny that 
he had meant the child to run herself breathless. Min- 
nie turned away sulking. 

“Come, come,” admonished Sarah, to distract Minnie, 
who, mistaking this for an order to help set the table, 
brought the cups from the shelf over the sink. 

Breakfast over, Elias left saying he expected to return 
earlier than the evening before, when he had been de- 
tained in conversation with the boss. 

As soon as the door closed on him, Sarah turned to 
Minnie. 

“Do not forget to bring the kerosene. Tell the gro- 
ceryman to put it in the book.” 

In the book! Trust! Minnie hated taking things 
on trust, and she said so petulantly to her mother, who, 
looking away and evading the child's objection, contin- 
ued : “If he says anything tell him your papa is working 
and your mama will soon pay the bill.” Some expression 
on her mother's face left the child silent, apparently 


50 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


acquiescent. “I think I will be home when you come 
from school,” Sarah continued, “but if I am not, then 
put the bedding out on the fire escape.” 

“Why can't Jacob do it?” Minnie asked in a fretted 
tone. 

Sarah turned to the boy: “You do it, Jacob, then.” 

“I peddle papers; ain’ that enough?” 

He was right. Sarah lacking the energy for dispute, 
spoke in a voice full of impending tears: 

“Look, look how they quarrel with me ! She does not 
want to do it, he does not want to do it — everything falls 
to me to do. Woe is me !” 

Minnie, who suffered when her mother cried, repented 
at once. 

“Aw right, ma, I'll do it — I'll do it.” The transfer 
of emphasis was inspired by her mother's incredulous 
look. 

“I am going to the Charities to get work,” Sarah re- 
sumed in a colorless, weary tone. “We owe the butcher 
and the grocer and everybody. And you all need shoes.” 
Jacob and Minnie regarded their feet. Sarah sighed. 

“Aw right, I’ll do it,” Minnie again promised, feeling 
her assurance ought to allay her mother's worries as 
to debts and shoes. To be even more of a solace, she 
proceeded to clear the table. Jacob ensconced hi nisei f in 
a corner to study his arithmetic, in which he was to 
be examined that day. 

“Is it hard?” asked Minnie. 

“Not very,” Jacob grunted, keeping his eyes on his 
book. 

“Will I be able to learn it when I get up high like 
you ?” 

“Aw, shut up!” shouted Jacob. Sarah looked at him 


ELIAS 51 

disapprovingly. “I don’ care,” he said sullenly, “all the 
time she asks questions — like last night.” 

“Last night — I asked questions? What questions?” 
Minnie seemed ready to argue against the false charge 
to the bitter end. Sarah heard Ida turn in bed. “Be 
quiet,” she begged. 

Jacob strapped his books. 

“Will you be home by dinner time?” he aJced his 
mother as he stood at the door ready to leave. 

“I don’t know.” 

In slight embarrassment, he requested the twenty-five 
cents for newspapers. 

Sarah repented her nocturnal rashness. Twenty-five 
cents was a large investment. However, she had prom- 
ised ; she gave him the money, cautioning him many 
times not to lose it while inwardly bearing bedbugs an 
additional grudge. 

“Wait for me,” Minnie called. 

“No, I got to go.” 

Minnie darted an anxious look after her brother, 
snatched up her primer and started to follow when 
Sarah detained her for one last reminder that she was 
to buy kerosene. 

“Aw right, mama, so a hundred times you tell me.” 
There Jacob was gone! She had been deprived of the 
glory of appearing on the street beside him, perhaps of 
carrying some of his books, and so presenting an en- 
viable figure before her little girl schoolmates! Oh, 
it made her sick! 

Sarah said nothing. Perhaps the child’s annoyance 
was justified. She lowered her head and sighed. Min- 
nie ran out. 

Sarah awakened Ida and Bubbele. She dressed them 


52 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


and set them to their feast of chicory and cruller. 
“Hurry,” she said. 

“Where you gone?” asked the sleepy Ida. 

“To get work.” 

“Where?” And Bubbele chimed in: “Yeh, where 
mama ?” 

Sarah bent over Bubbele and spoke in the confiding 
tone of mothers telling fairy tales: 

“Mama is going to a BIG place, where they will send 
her by rich, RICH houses to do work, and to make 
money to buy Bubbele cakie, and — and ” Sarah’s in- 
ventiveness gave out. She paused and continued with 
greater energy: — “and chicken, CHICKEN for Bub- 
bele !” She smothered the baby with passionate kisses. 

“Cakie and chicken!” Ida repeated, imitating her 
mother’s tone. 

Bubbele deigned to respond with the condescension of 
a baby in any household: 

“Yeh, aw right, mama, y’ kin go.” 

“Oh, yes? Thank you, my child.” 

Sarah and Ida exchanged glances and laughed. 

When Sarah was ready to go, Bubbele pouted and 
seemed to change her mind concerning the leave of 
absence. Sarah repeated her golden promise; doing so, 
she smiled herself out, incidentally instructing Ida not 
to go near the matches, not to let Bubbele do so either : 
to run down at eleven o’clock and buy ten cents’ w T orth 
of wurst and three cents’ worth of bread; to be sure 
to get mustard with the wurst; to put the eatables in 
Minnie’s charge for division among them at lunch ; to 
take care that Bubbele should not fall and hurt herself ; 
not to fall herself ; not to let Foxy run wild ; under no 
circumstances to go near the open windows. 


ELIAS 


53 


Ida listened intelligently, and Sarah left without mis- 
givings ; for after all Ida was nearly seven. 

On the street, meeting Mrs. Ratkin, Sarah recklessly 
informed her of the bad night they had had. 

Mrs. Ratkin did not see what she could do about it ; 
since it was not her fault she did not see why Mrs. 
Mendel bothered her about it. As Sarah walked off. 
she thought : “Nu, stay at home and clean. Goes out 
like a whole lady.” 


X 

The hours seemed endless to the two small children. 
But they made the best of the long wait, buoyed up 
by the promise of good things to eat. It was a relief, 
however, when eleven o’clock came and with it the break. 
Ida perked up and summoned Bubbele to accompany 
her on the errand of wurst, bread and mustard. She 
closed the door hastily and forthwith had reason to 
repent. The key of the patent lock had been left stick- 
ing inside. For a moment she was greatly disturbed ; 
then she bethought herself of the fire-escape window, 
accessible by way of their neighbor’s flat, and all was 
well again in Ida’s world. 

The delectables purchased, the three waited on the 
street for Jacob and Minnie, who at last appeared. Ida 
cautiously broached the subject of the lockout, supple- 
menting her account with the distressing information 
that Bubbele made her “sick!” that she had ‘Tanned” 
in the gutter in front of “ninety thousand” trucks and 
nearly got “murdered” over seventy times. She de- 
pended upon the martyrdom entailed by her monitor- 
ship, to neutralize the offense of her forgetfulness. And 


54 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


it did. Neither Jacob nor Minnie complained, Minnie 
out of sheer gladness to have Bubbele there safe and 
sound. As they mounted the stairs, Jacob asked when 
their mother was coming back. 

‘To-morrow,” said Ida. 

Minnie dropped Bubbele's hand and stopped short. 
“To-morrow!” she and Jacob exclaimed simultaneously. 

“Yeh.” Ida looked at Minnie. “She said you 
shouldn't go no more to school to-day, you should stay 
home.” The greater their incredulity the more Ida 
tried to convince them. “I should live so,” she ended. 
Whereupon they all resumed their upward climb, the 
one least conscious of complications being Foxy. 
Blessed are the ignorant! 

Timidly knocking at the neighbor's door, Minnie asked 
permission to climb across the fire escape into her 
“house.” Jacob, with a natural aversion for all neigh- 
bors, had refused to embark on the enterprize. 

The neighbor was willing, glad, indeed, to accommo- 
date the Mendels, who had extended her the same 
courtesy. Minnie crawled through the window out on 
the fire escape, which barely touched the window of 
her “house.” She put one foot over the railing on to 
the window sill of the Mendel kitchen and with one 
hand grasped the window frame. Then she swung the 
second foot over swiftly. 

The Mendel dwelling was four stories high. A slight 
mis-step would have landed Minnie in Kingdom Come. 
But she performed the acrobatic feat without a mis- 
step. Surely it is an inconsistent Power which watches 
over the children of the lowly, lavishing dirt, disease, 
and starvation upon them on the one hand, and, on the 
other hand, rescuing them from trucks and falls. 


ELIAS 


55 


Mrs. Ratkin just then in the yard wanted to scream, 
yet had sufficient presence of mind to consider it might 
frighten Minnie and be her undoing. When the child 
finally disappeared in safety, she shrugged her shoulders 
and mumbled: “Such a mother! To leave her children 
alone like that. A chutzpeh (cheek). Only a Deitschke 
would do it.” Mrs. Ratkin had previously questioned 
the two younger children on the street concerning their 
mother's whereabouts. “She went uptown,” Ida had 
said; from which Mrs. Ratkin concluded that Sarah 
was enjoying a vain social call. 

Minnie opened the door for the ravenously hungry 
group, who without further preliminary than the open- 
ing of the parcel for a frank exposure of the wurst, 
mustard and bread, sat down to eat. Each of the chil- 
dren gave Foxy an occasional morsel. Jacob offered 
him the skin of his piece of wurst generously spread 
with mustard. The dog looked decidedly unapprecia- 
tive of the joke ; the children laughed. ’ Minnie called 
Foxy to her, cooed to him, and with a loving pat gave 
him her last piece of wurst, which Foxy consumed with 
lightning rapidity. 

“Who's gonna bring supper?” inquired Jacob as he 
was getting ready to leave. 

“Papa’ll bring it. Mama said so,” replied Ida, 
stretching her imagination. Jacob and Minnie stared. 
They were puzzled beyond words. But Jacob was not 
one to wrestle with problems. Before going out he 
asked Minnie to see to it that their father kept supper 
for him; he might be detained selling his larger stock 
of newspapers, he said. Minnie promised. 

As soon as he was out Minnie turned to Ida. 

“Are you sure mama ain' coming home?” she asked 
earnestly. 


56 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Honest.” Ida laid her hand over her heart. 

Minnie was convinced. 

She went about quietly cleaning the table and pick- 
ing up scraps from the floor. It occurred to her that 
since her mother was to absent herself for so long, she 
herself ought to clean the place against vermin. 

“I’m gone down to buy kerosene,” she said. 

The children were expecting her to join them in a 
game of jacks. Bubbele pouted. 

“You never play wid me,” she wailed. 

“It will bite papa and mama, and Bubbele too, to- 
night if I don’ spill kerosene,” Minnie emphatically 
explained. 

Bubbele capitulated after her big sister had promised 
to come back in a “second.” Perhaps she came back in 
less than a second, she was so out of breath. 

The first thing Minnie did was to struggle with the 
tightly imbedded cork. She got it out with a jerk, 
spilling lots of the fluid over her person. Next she 
and Ida brought all the bedding to the fire escape ; Bub- 
bele felt useful carrying a single sheet. These things 
accomplished, Minnie saturated the low woodwork of 
the bedroom, the floor, the spring, the frame of the bed, 
the cots. Next she brought the bedding in again and 
bestowed a fair dose upon each piece. So much of the 
liquid covered her own person by this time that she was 
beginning to be more of a smell than a body. 

Sarah returned as the Augean task was nearing com- 
pletion. She was almost overcome by the stench, and 
for a moment was too puzzled to realize what was go- 
ing on. Then she automatically dropped several pack- 
ages out of her tired arms and shrieked: 

“God mine, what did you do? How did you dare f” 
She slapped the diligent Minnie. 


ELIAS 


57 


Minnie stood speechless. Sarah, in a passion, shook 
the child with all her might, and gave her a push which 
sent her tumbling on to the floor. Her face struck against 
the table. 

Bubbele began to cry ; Foxy to bark ; Ida crouched in 
a far corner of the room ; Minnie shrieked. 

Blood! Sarah was terrified. Rushing to Minnie she 
raised her from the floor and shouted to Ida to bring 
water. Minnie's nose was bleeding. 

While performing first-aid to the injured, Sarah be- 
stowed much petting and many kisses. 

“But why did you do it?" the mother implored in 
anguish, holding a wet cloth against the weeping child’s 
nose. 

Minnie explained between sobs and heavings. 

“Ida said you would’n’ come home till to-morrow, 
and I thought it would bite papa to-night if I did’n’ do 
it by myself.” 

Sarah looked at Ida with the queer feeling that in- 
sanity was lurking in the household. 

“To-morrow! Who said to-morrow?” 

“I had afraid to stay home alone,” Ida wailed. “Bub- 
bele and me — Bubbele near got ranned over ” She 

ended in copious tears. 

Sarah sighed, resigning herself to the tangle and the 
stench. When Minnie felt better, she laid her on the 
lounge, and w r earily restored the bedding to the fire 
escape and the cots to the hall. 

The first thing Elias said when he returned in the 
evening was: 

“What’s the matter with her nose ?” There was much 
concern in his voice. Indeed the organ had assumed al- 
most double proportions. Sarah was very contrite. 


58 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“I was so angry about the stench that I nearly killed 
her. Poor childie, she meant it well. I gave her 
such a push that it would have killed her but for better 
luck.” Reflectively she added : “I could have killed any- 
body after such a day as this.” 

Elias listened puzzled. What difference in this day 
from other days had warranted his wife taking chances 
with the life of their eldest little daughter? Sarah was 
fast returning to her old ways. He made no complaint, 
but he was annoyed. 

“What was the matter with the day?” he asked. 

XI 

Self-consciousness disappears with the occurrence of 
the unusual. Therefore, without constraint Sarah re- 
counted her experiences at the Charities. She spoke hast- 
ily, excitedly, even touching Elias’s arm when she 
thought he was allowing his attention to be distracted 
by one of the children. 

When she called for Mira, she found her still cleaning 
her three rooms, and the operation continued for a full 
hour; after which Mira herself needed a cleaning, and 
this consumed more time. Thus, it was after eleven 
o’clock that they started out, and as they footed it 
the whole way, they did not reach the Charities until 
noon. 

“On pins and needles I sat in her house on account of 
the children,” Sarah told Elias. 

At the Charities door Mira, drawing her shawl about 
her with a touch of smugness, said she would wait for 
Sarah on the street. “Time enough to go inside when 
one has to,” she said with a smile. This cut Sarah, 


ELIAS 


59 


who interpreted it as a hint at social superiority and 
felt it an audacity ; Sarah’s ancestry included fewer 
needy ones than Mira’s. If one were to go by that law 
she was certainly Mira’s superior. “But when one is 
down oneself ” She lowered her eyes and sighed. 

Elias sensed with a pang that she blamed him for her 
social deterioration. “But who wanted her to go?” he 
defended himself. “If I had known, she would not have 
gone.” He sighed and looked through the window. 

Sarah had entered the Charities alone, and from sheer 
fright and dejection had slunk into the first room she 
saw. It happened to be the right room. 
******* 

“What is your name, please?” asked the Lady at the 
desk. 

The man darted a quick, nervous glance around the 
room, then brought his eyes back to his interlocutor. 

“Huh?” He held his mouth agape. 

“What is your name?” This time there was a slight 
frostiness in the Lady’s tone. 

The applicant grew still more uncomfortable. In his 
nervousness he turned his head squarely away from the 
desk, but quickly faced around again. The Lady raised 
her voice and put the question in Yiddish. She suc- 
ceeded in eliciting a steadfast regard of her face. She 
asked again: “What — is — your — name?” with freezing 
iciness. The man dropped his eyes. Some ill fate led 
him to shuffle on his feet and look backwards once 
more. 

“I am talking to you,” the Lady shouted, “to you! 
Can’t you understand when a person asks you your 
name?” In an abandonment of disgust she added in 
English: “For goodness’ sake!” Several clerks in the 
large room raised their heads, and the Head of the 


6o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Department, an employee of many years’ standing, ruf- 
fled her forehead in irritation. 

The shock of the Lady’s louder tone brought the ap- 
plicant to his senses. As a matter of fact, he quite 
grasped the question and had known he was the one 
addressed, but somehow his tongue had failed to serve 
him. With awakened spirit he threw his head back to 
help convey the impression that while he had not un- 
derstood, he now did, and said: “Uh, sure. My name? 
Itzick.” 

The Lady proceeded to write. “Your second name?” 

As he had never been sick, Itzick promptly answered 
it had not been necessary to give him a second name. 

It was very trying. Behind Itzick waited a long line 
of men and women. The Head of the Department sent 
frequent inquiring glances to indicate that the line should 
diminish more rapidly. The Lady exploded. 

“Sick! Who asked you about sick? Your second 
tiame f” Under her breath she muttered: “Stupid!” 
and flushed patches appeared on her tired face. 

Itzick’s “next” dug his knuckles into Itzick’s ribs 
and explained in a whisper that she wanted his family 
name. Itzick, his face purple, intended to tell her he 
had thought she meant his second first name, which 
orthodox Jews give only in cases of severe illness, but 
he merely answered, praying for the roof to come down 
on his head and crush him: 

“Uh, sure, Kramer.” His knees shook, yet he made 
an outward show of assurance. 

“Thank God!” said the Lady, though her face re- 
tained its expression of disgust. She looked up at Itzick, 
whose eyes, meeting hers, closed quickly, opened, and 
closed quickly again. 

“Where do you live?” 


ELIAS 


61 


Itzick Kramer’s heart beat fast with the horror of 
another question. He was conscious that his face had 
reddened, which made him redden the more. He wished 
he could tear himself to pieces. 

“Around the block.” 

Itzick Kramer’s “next” would have “put him wise” 
to the specific information required, but the Lady's 
countenance so obviously threatened a volcanic eruption 
that he felt compelled to preserve his own safety. It- 
zick Kramer’s “next” coughed and put his hand up to 
his mouth so as to hide the fact from the lady that the 
hand was originally intended to journey to Itzick Kra- 
mer’s ribs. 

There was a hush of Something Terrible in the air. 

“Around the block?” shouted the Lady with the ris- 
ing inflection that democratically proclaimed her one of 
Itzick Kramer’s compatriots. “What do — what street? 
What number ? Can’t you understand that I have to 
write it in a book ? Where do you all get your heads ?” 
she ended almost in a wail, at her wits’ end. 

The Department Head came upon the scene. Experi- 
ence had by now sapped this Lady dry of explosiveness. 

“Miss,” said she in a dignified tone, “if you cannot 
get the information you need, send them away; do not 
raise your voice; it disturbs everyone in the office.” 
Quietly, then, she ordered Itzick Kramer out of the 
line, telfing him to hear , or go home and wash his ears. 

Itzick flushed a deeper purple. With that sudden in- 
surrection which at times comes to timid natures, he 
refused to leave. He had done nothing wrong, he said. 
The Department Head summoned a man who was em- 
ployed to weed out disturbers, and soon Itzick Kramer, 
overcome by physical superiority, found himself ejected 
into the callous Great Outdoors. 


62 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“The impudence !” muttered the Department Head as 
she made her way back to her desk, meanwhile, at a 
glance, taking inventory of the persons in the line. The 
soul of the line trembled. 

Itzick Kramers “next” automatically fell into place 
for the quizzing. The first two questions were answered 
with the brilliance of a school boy who has learned his 
lesson by heart. The third question held the horror of 
the Unknown. He strained his head forward to listen 
attentively. 

“How many children,” the Lady asked in Yiddish, 
“have you under” (jerking her thumb downward) 
“fourteen years of age, and how many children have 
you over ” (jerking her thumb upward) “fourteen years 
of age?” She put the question very slowly, stressing 
each word, allowing time for beads of perspiration to 
break out on the man’s anxious face and for his heart 
to beat so rapidly that his attention was divided be- 
tween what she asked and that organ. When finally 
she completed the question and he quite grasped it, he 
experienced the greatest relief. He took a deep breath. 
Inoffensive as this act may be under ordinary circum- 
stances, it can have a most irritating effect upon a Lady 
waiting, whose business it is to elicit replies at maxi- 
mum speed. The Lady moved nervously in her chair 
and drew up her toes inside her shoes. The man, feel- 
ing her exacerbation, desired to say the right thing 
quickly, but as nothing can so readily make a clean 
sweep of intelligence as nervousness, he began enumer- 
ating : “Lebe is not yet ten ” he stopped for breath — 

“Yudel is already eleven ” He took another breath. 

The Lady’s demeanor evinced increasing impatience. 
Schmuel Rothenberg, thinking to make haste, enumer- 
ated more hurriedly. 


ELIAS 63 

“Bashele should live and be well.” Bashele was the 
ailing youngest. 

“How ” began the Lady, interrupting him, but 

Schmuel Rothenberg humbly pleaded: 

“Oh, Lady, Lady, wait a minute.” She waited. Run- 
ning his tongue over his upper lip and raising his 
shoulders, as if taking a new lease on energy, he wenf 
on, his knees shaking: 

“Bashele is three years — and two older — oldest died, 
may it never happen to you!” Sadness came into the 
man’s eyes; he looked down at his feet. 

“Have you any children over fourteen years?” The 
Lady asked, relaxing from sheer fatigue. 

“I have — that is, I had ” 

This was too much for human endurance. 

“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” the Lady exclaimed as 
loudly as she dared, bearing the Department Head in 
mind. 

“Lady — Lady ” Schmuel Rothenberg’s tone and 

the anxious expression of his face would have melted a 
heart harder than the Lady’s. 

“Can’t you answer a single question straight?” she 
fairly begged. 

“Yes, yes, Lady,” Schmuel Rothenberg assured her, 
not understanding a single word, knowing only there 
was pleading in her voice. Suddenly his nervousness 
left him completely, as so often happens when people 
are roused to a point beyond themselves, and he an- 
swered without further hesitancy: 

"The other children died; the four are all younger.” 

“Thank God!” the Lady exclaimed with so much sar- 
casm that some in the line smiled and more daring ones 
laughed. 


6 4 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


To Schmuel Rothenberg it appeared that she thanked 
God because his children had died. He winced and 
dropped his eyes. 

“What is your trade ?” 

“Nothing.” 

The Lady placed him on the list of “Useful Men,” 
wrote something on a ticket, gave it to him, and told 
him to come the next day. 

“To-morrow! Not to-day?” There was keen dis- 
appointment in the man’s voice. Schmuel Rothenberg’s 
life was a perpetual animal terror as to mere livelihood. 

From the Lady’s face it was clear he was to move 
on and make room for the next. He moved on, medita- 
tively repeating “To-morrow!” as he slowly walked out 
of the room. 

******* 

Before long the Department Head decided to form 
two lines of the remaining applicants, and Sarah was 
among the first to be interrogated. 

“I grew hot and cold,” she said, “but my Lady was 
really a nice girl, a golden girl. She talked with me 
as if she was an old friend who had known me all 
her life. She wants me to work in her house Sundays, 
and will give me two more Ladies.” 

Did Sarah have to go back there? This concerned 
Elias, distressed by her tales beyond any interest in her 
success. 

It now came Sarah’s turn to exclaim with the Lady’s 
fervor: “Thank God!” No, she did not have to go 
back. 

The finality of her tone must have been sport for 
the Fates. 


ELIAS 


65 


“And Mira, did she wait for you?” 

“Yes, and lucky, too, because I had such a pain in 
my side that I had to go to her home and lie down.” 

For a time neither* Sarah nor Elias spoke. Then 
Sarah, examining- her* apron as if for some definite 
purpose, said reflectively: 

“I felt when I left there as if I had been spilt with 
pamoonitza (slops). And that is for work. How must 
it be when one comes for money!” She shuddered. 
Elias looked at her attentively. 

“Then after that I came home to find the stench of 
kerosene.” Sarah looked at Minnie asleep on the lounge, 
and sighed. “I nearly killed her.” How Sarah’s heart 
ached ! 

The two younger children were playing marbles on 
the floor. In a farther corner of the room, ink on the 
floor and his geography book on his lap serving as a 
desk, Jacob sat studying his lessons. 

As the supper dishes had not yet been cleared away, 
Sarah rose to go about her tasks. Elias from diffidence 
checked his impulse to help her ; instead he brought in 
the bedding from the fire escape. Later they sat down, 
and Elias read aloud the day’s news. 

At bed time, Jacob, at Elias’ instructions, helped to 
set up the cots, as Minnie was still asleep. When Sarah 
went to undress her, Minnie woke up. “I’ll get un- 
dressed by myself,” she said testily, drawing away from 
her mother and feeling her nose. Sarah’s eyes filled 
with tears ; she turned away. 

Amid childish pranks and laughter, Elias put the two 
younger ones to bed. Then he himself retired. Soon all 
was still. 


66 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Mrs. Ratkin, passing as she extinguished the gas in 
the hall, thought sneeringly: 

“God be thanked, it is quiet here.” Sing-Sing had 
effected a cure. But what a measure! A blight never 
to be lived down. 

XII 

The following Sunday Sarah did her first day’s work 
at the “golden” Lady’s home. It was a modest apart- 
ment shared by several girls. Sarah was to do the 
week’s washing and Grand Cleaning, as the girls who 
went out to work could do only makeshift cleaning dur- 
ing the week. 

Ella Liebman, the “golden” Lady, gave Sarah, as she 
had promised, the names of two other Ladies who had 
applied to the Charities Employment Bureau for “a 
nice woman, one who would appreciate kind treatment.” 

On her second Sunday at Miss Liebman’s Sarah de- 
scribed her other employers. Mrs. Finkelstein, who en- 
gaged her for Tuesdays, was “a simple, nice woman,” 
she said; while Mrs. Roth, who kept a servant for the 
general housework and for whom she was to do wash- 
ing on Thursdays, was “a high-tone Americaner.” Mrs. 
Roth had insisted on Fridays. “On Fridays I have my 
own Sabbath to make,” said Sarah, to whose proud na- 
ture neglecting Sabbath preparation meant a diminution 
of family dignity. It was one of Sarah’s inconsistencies 
that, little as she felt for the Sabbath, she never missed 
making the special preparations for it, as had her 
mother before her. 

Mrs. Roth was, indeed, the sort of person whose 
generosity follows the pattern of generosity set by Fate 


ELIAS 


*>7 


itself. For Sarah, coming from the Charities — evidence 
of humblest position and possession — Mrs. Roth deemed 
it proper that the normal working day should be 
lengthened by two hours and the normal wages cur- 
tailed by twenty-five cents. In her opinion, a charity 
subject who dictated the terms of a benefaction was an 
ingrate. 

Sarah, when applying to Mrs. Roth, timidly told her 
that the Charities Lady paid her one dollar for the day 
and kept her only until four o’clock, thus giving her time 
to prepare her own family’s supper. Mrs. Roth, mildly 
annoyed, wondered by what right Miss Liebman set the 
standard of hours and wages, and became at once skep- 
tical as to Sarah’s niceness. However, she acceded to 
the terms, but with a gingerliness that did not escape 
Sarah’s sensitive perceptions. 

Once prejudiced, Mrs. Roth adopted a consistently 
supercilious manner. She refrained from greeting 
Sarah at either her coming or going, and looked beyond 
her when she entered the room in which Sarah stood 
washing the clothes. Sarah never left Mrs. Roth with- 
out being greatly wrought up. 

At the end of a number of weeks, during which she 
regularly poured out the tale of her grievances to Miss 
Liebman, who listened with a social worker’s sympathy 
for the types of Sarah, she came one Sunday more than 
usually excited. It appeared that the previous Thurs- 
day Sarah had informed Mrs. Roth she had a pain in 
her side and could not do her washing; that Mrs. Roth 
had remonstrated emphatically: 

“A pain in the side! Goodness, that is not so awful! 
/ get a pain in my side, too.” Sarah was about to 
agree to do her lighter washing when the lady added : 


68 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“A poor woman should not be so particular.” Sarah 
was up in arms. 

“You can do your own washing!” she flung out. 
While making for the door she heard: 

“The impudence of these people ! A little pain in the 
side and they cannot do a speck of washing ! And when 
her child, her Bubbele, had a tiny cold, she did not come 
at all. These people are, honestly, more particular about 
themselves than we are about ourselves and our 
children.” 

“God save me from such other ladies!” Sarah said 
to Miss Liebman, and added: “After all, am I not a 
woman just like she is? And if my side hurts, must 
it hurt less than hers because it is my side? Should 
one woman not sympathize with another woman? Am 
I made of wood and she of gold? Fni!” Sarah bent 
lower over the washtub. Miss Liebman looked at he? 
quizzically. “She is a high-tone lady. From home we 
are not from the garbage-can either.” Sarah sighed and 
rubbed harder, wishing all manner of ill luck on the 
Sabbath. 

Sarah’s version of the Mrs. Roth incident as com- 
municated to Elias contained the additional reflection 
that the woman was a pastkootzvte (an ugly, nasty 
one) : upon saying which she spit vehemently into the 
sink and secretly hoped Elias was feeling as badly as 
she. 

One Sunday later Miss Liebman asked Sarah if she 
cared to take another place. 

“No,” she said, “I do not want another Mrs. Roth.” 
After a moment’s silence she added musingly: “When 
the children will need shoes again, it will be hard.” 
Suddenly, with a rueful grimace she added : “Oh, let 


ELIAS 69 

God worry a little.” She looked up. They laughed. 
Miss Liebman was growing fond of Sarah. 

* * * * * * * 

And God must have Worried ; the need-for-shoes period 
brought its own solution. 

By some providence the butcher in the neighborhood 
was bereft of his wife, who every Friday had plucked 
the chickens. In his predicament he recalled that Sarah 
had often taken meat on trust and decided she might be 
glad to make a little extra money. Sarah eagerly ac- 
cepted the work, which was to be done in the very early 
morning hours on Fridays and the days preceding the 
Holy Days. Minnie, “a smart girl,” could help, as the 
butcher suggested. 

The period of greater affluence for the Mendels 
brought greater peace, but not according to the wagging 
of Mrs. Ratkin’s tongue. Through that censorious me- 
dium Sarah’s character remained as black as ever with 
the neighbors, who were predisposed to antagonism be- 
cause of Sarah’s standoffishness, which they miscon- 
strued as an assumption of superiority, whereas it 
sprang from diffidence and a desire to hide her home 
difficulties. 

How was it, then, that Sarah raised her voice so loud 
that neighbors could hear, and resorted to the publicity 
of a court scene? 

Who shall stand in judgment on a human being at his 
wits’ end? Only he who would call the drowning man 
who catches at a straw a fool. 

XIII 

On an afternoon three months later, the quarter gas 
meter in the Mendel household burned low, and Sarali 


70 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


was without the quarter necessary to brace it. She was 
in a quandary, the supper was only half cooked. Count 
as many times as she would, the loose change in the 
home treasury aggregated only twenty-two cents. Pres- 
ently she thought of an old kerosene stove which had 
been put away under the bed, never to be used again. 
There was kerosene in the house, and the stove might 
work well enough to finish the meal on anyway. With 
much effort she extracted it and carried it into the room- 
oT-all-affairs. She gave it a thorough cleaning, and with 
the aid of a broken saucer got it to stand firmly on the 
coal stove. Then she found there was not a match in 
the house! She looked down in the yard for Minnie, 
intending to send her to the grocery store for matches. 
The child was not to be seen. Sarah had just about re- 
signed herself to the descent and ascent of the four 
flights of stairs, when the door burst open and a very 
excited Minnie and a wildly barking Foxy dashed in. 
One would have thought a deadly enemy was in pursuit. 

“What’s the matter?” cried Sarah. The child stuck 
her thumb in her mouth and lowered her head. Sarah, 
too preoccupied with her own plight, did not press for 
an explanation. She told Minnie to go on the errand. 

“I don’ wanna,” Minnie whimpered. 

“You don’t want to? Why? 

“Abie ” 

“Abie what?” 

“Abie’s down by the yard, and I have afraid.” 

“Children’s nonsense,” thought Sarah glancing down 
in the yard again. “He’s not there. Don’t look in the 
yard. Run right out,” she urged Minnie gently. 

The child, sensing her mother’s weariness, consented 
to go, though as she descended the stairs and ran 


ELIAS 


7 T 

through the hall, she was in mortal terror of encounter- 
ing Abie. 

A little while before she had gone down to the yard 
to play with Foxy. Abie standing in the doorway of 
the rear tenement had instantly hailed her with ‘‘Hello, 
Fights !” Whether Abie called her Fights “for fun” or 
“for fair” made no difference to Minnie; the epithet 
jarred her sensibilities. She always colored and experi- 
enced a moment of helplessness, which ended in a weak 
order to Abie to “shut up.” This time in the moment 
of her helplessness she wavered between stooping down 
to Foxy and looking over at Abie. She looked at Abie. 
His smile obviously declared he meant “Hello, Fights” 
for fun. Nevertheless Minnie ordered him to “shut 

up ” but shyly, hesitatingly, as she was not in a mood 

for a squabble. Abie, however, had no ear for subtleties. 
“Fights,” he repeated just to tease, coming closer. 

“I tell you, shut up!” shouted Minnie stamping her 
foot. 

Foxy, scenting a fray, assumed a belligerent attitude. 

“Don’ che say like that,” Abie warned with a superior 
flutter of his eyelids, annoyed at Minnie’s inability to 
take his teasing and giving her a scornful look as she 
edged away from him. 

“So don’ you 

“Uh, it’s fooling. Don’ che know fooling — Fights!” 

Tears of anger and impotence came to her eyes; her 
little heart fluttered and her chest heaved. Abie was a 
“murder.” 

Gathering Foxy up in her arms she made hastily for 
the front tenement. Suddenly she faced about. 

“You shut up!” she cried, her face deeply flushed. 
“Shut up, or — or I’ll sig’m on you!” Her threat was 


72 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


weak and the grand finale, uttered in a choked voice, 
was even weaker. “You — bum — you !” 

Yet the thrust went home. It aroused Abie’s wrath; 
his eyes threatened dire consequences. Instantly Min- 
nie resorted to aggressive self-defense. 

“Sig’m, Foxy, sig’m!” 

Foxy, with a fine sense of loyalty, had already dis- 
engaged himself from Minnie’s hold and was barking 
menacingly. He darted in a semi-circle towards Abie, 
which plainly promised defense of his mistress, right 
or wrong. At Minnie’s second bidding Foxy sprang 
upon Abie. Whereupon Minnie, womanlike, recalled 
him. 

Abie, though in truth frightened, pretended contempt 
for her kindly intervention. 

“Aw, mind your business,” he said. 

“You should die in a black coffin wid your mama and 
your papa together!” 

Abie’s next strategic move, Minnie rapidly decided, 
would be one which would make it wiser for her to 
seek immediate safety. At full speed she dashed to- 
ward the door of the front tenement. Foxy’s loyalty 
could no longer bear restraint. He snapped at Abie’s 
legs, which legs, in the teeth of actuality, were com- 
pelled to relax in their furtive effort to bar Minnie’s 
race to safety. It so happened, too, that Abie stumbled, 
landing on the palm of his hands and the tip of his 
nose just grazing the front tenement threshold. Foxy 
jumped blithely over his form and barking triumphantly 
joined his mistress at the bottom of the stairs. 

Abie, from his prostrate position, in the knowledge 
that he was the loser, hurled defiantly: 

“Fights, Fights! Your mama and your papa fights 


ELIAS 


73 


like Irish bums. You got your papa arrested. You 
made believe he was by your cousin in Brooklyn. 
Fights !” 

Minnie powerless to retort rapidly mounted the stairs 
followed by Foxy. 

Abie picking himself up removed a splinter from his 
finger and felt of the bruised tip of his nose. He stood 
in meditation from which he was roused presently by 
an imperative call : 

“Abie, Abie !” 

Abie sent his gaze up the impertinent height of the 
rear tenement and beheld the face of his mother. 

“Wha’ do you wan’?” 

“Kom up stez en go buy ah pickle/’ 

“Aw say, mama !” He hesitated a moment ; then his 
pent-up anger burst. “Kom up stez and go buy ah 
pickle,” he mimicked. Instantly he realized his mis- 
demeanor and the possibly disastrous consequences. 
“Aw, ma, always me. Can’ che send the other ones 
once?” he cried sulkily. 

“Abie!” There was that in his mother’s tone which 
carried the threat: “Wait till your papa comes home.” 
Abie had no great fondness for the prehistoric custom 
to which his father resorted, especially since the inno- 
vation of a five- tongue strap had added decided physical 
discomfort to the original humility of the operation. 

“Aw, ma, I’m tired,” he wailed. But he made for 
the rear tenement. His mother withdrew her head 
from the window. 

Properly financed, Abie was soon retracing his steps 
to purchase the pickle for the family supper. 

Meanwhile, as we know, Minnie’s mother had dele- 
gated her purchasing agent of a box of matches. The 


74 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


two belligerents met in the grocery store. At sight of 
Abie, Minnie was alarmed. She moved closer to the 
store-keeper. But Abie was now in a different mood. 
He followed Minnie and half-whispered : “I ain’ gonna 
hi’ che. Don* be afraid.” Minnie showed no confidence. 
He added reassuringly: “I should live so, I ain’ gonna 
hi’ che.” Though her skepticism was somewhat allayed, 
Minnie remained unwilling to risk too close proximity. 
Even on the street she lagged a trifle behind. But when 
Abie sincerely asked her, apropos of nothing and quite 
as if there had been no rupture in their relationship: 
“Say, Minn, who do you like bedder, your mama or 
your papa?” she relaxed entirely. 

“Both,” she answered with an air of defiance. 

“But I mean , if God would ask you who He should 
make die first, your mama or your papa, who would 
you say?” 

“Not neither my mama or my papa.” 

Abie manifested his impatience by an especial twist 
of his body, reserved for just such trying moments. 
Minnie slipped a few inches behind. 

“Aw, I ain’ gonna hi’ che, crazy. But I mean first, 
'Not neither’ ain’ no ‘first.’” 

Minnie inhaled deeply. She meant to hold to her 
point. Bobbing her head for emphasis, she repeated: 
“I like my mama and my papa.” 

Abie expressed his vast contempt of this miniature 
female by disdainfully mimicking in falsetto: 

“I like my mama and my papa.” It occurred to him 
to demonstrate by masculine precept, and he told her 
to ask him whom he liked better, his father or his 
mother. Minnie kept quiet. “Well,” Abie reiterated, 
“ask me!” 


ELIAS 


75 

Here the pickle divorced itself from its wrapping and 
dropped to the slanting sidewalk: 

“Oo ! Oo !” cried Minnie, wringing her hands. “Your 
papa’ll murder you !” 

Abie, with his foot intercepted the pickle as it was 
rolling into the gutter, and with his dirty hand brushed 
off the dirt it had gathered. When it was restored to its 
wrapping, he answered Minnie: “No, he won't,” his 
voice, however, carrying no conviction. Minnie took up 
the conversation where it had been broken off and asked 
rather weakly: 

“Who do you like bedder, Abie, your mama or your 
papa ?” 

Abie, recalled to a lively sense of his father's hard hand 
by Minnie’s cry, “Your papa'll murder you,” forgot that 
he was to demonstrate by precept and answer with a sim- 
ple “I like my mama bedder.” Shuffling the dust under 
his feet, he said in an aggrieved tone : 

“I don' like my papa anyhow. All the time he licks 
me.” Abie's tone caused Minnie to look sideways at 
him. Sincerity is never lost on children. Abie went 
on musingly: “I’ll get him arrested.” 

Minnie started as from a galvanic shock. “Oo, don' 
che," she cut in, “don' che never.” She stopped still 
and confronted him. 

“I will so. Wha' do you care?” 

Minnie saw Abie already rushing into the teeth of 
this calamity. Her little heart went through a spasm of 
terror. 

“The policemans is fresh things. They pull your 
papa,” she said earnestly. Abie made no rejoinder. 
“They pulled my papa.” 

“Yeh?” He gave her a swift inquisitive glance. 

Realizing she had confirmed Abie's suspicion of the 


76 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


family skeleton, Minnie turned self-conscious; she stuck 
her thumb in her mouth and lowered her eyes. They 
walked on in silence. Soon Abie said contemplatively: 

“Let ’em pull. He licks me. He murders me for 
nothin’. ” 

On the score of “murderings” Minnie was exceedingly 
sympathetic. Though corporal punishment was not in- 
cluded in the bill of miseries of the Mendel children 
(the once when Sarah struck Minnie was the rare ex- 
ception), Minnie had sufficient imagination to divine the 
horrific import of the shrill shrieks that issued from 
other homes in the tenements. 

Minnie was preoccupied and made no reply. Abie 
asked sotta voce: 

“Will you show me where?” 

Minnie looked thoughtfully at him, then spoke. What 
she said was so utterly irrelevant that he stared as 
though she had gone crazy. 

“So let’s us get married,” she said just so. 

The question of marriage between them had been 
broached before, but always by Abie. Minnie only sought 
diversion now from the subject that had inveigled her 
into an admission of a family skeleton. 

Abie was thoroughly disgusted with the irrelevancy 
and its author. 

“Uh, crazy, don’ che know only big peoples dass get 
married like your mama and your papa ? CRAZY CAT !” 

“I mean,” she said a little ashamed that she was 
lacking in knowledge on this subject whereas Abie 
seemed to be very wise, “when like to-morrow and over- 
to-morrow, like ten years, then we dass can.” 

“We dass if we wanna,” quoth Abie, with a sapient 
nod of his head. 

Hitherto, whenever Abie had asked her if she would 


ELIAS 77 

marry him when he “got a man” her reply had been the 
provisional one, “Yeh, if you’ll be a teacher.” 

Glad now of an avenue of escape, Minnie exclaimed 
unconditionally : 

“Yeh, I wanna.” 

They reached the stairs of the front tenement. Minnie 
began skippingly to ascend. Abie proceeded to the yard, 
from where he called back sing-song: 

“MI— IN !” 

Minnie stopped at the middle of the first flight. 

“Wha’ do you wan’?” 

“Come back.” Minnie turned about. They met at 
the foot of the stairs. 

“I forgot,” said he. “To-morrow, so will you show 
me by the court?” 

She succumbed to his more masterful will. “If you 
don’ tell out,” she said softly. 

“Uh,” he replied, mistaking her meaning. “I knowed 
all the time, only I didn’t said ever, because my mama 
told me I dassn’t. My mama sawn you go into the court 
wid her own eyes. She told my papa by the night.” 

Minnie, unable to meet the situation, stuck her thumb 
in her mouth. After a perceptible pause she argued 
weakly : 

“But they don’ fights no more.” Her head was low- 
ered ; she looked at him shamefacedly. 

“To-morrow, so will you show me by the court?” 
he asked again. 

“Aw right, to-morrow,” she promised faintly. 

“Aw right.” Abie was satisfied. They turned on 
their respective ways ; but in a moment he called again : 
“MI-IN!” 

“Wha* do you wan*?” 


73 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Don* tell nobody. It’s gonna be a secret.” 

Minnie waited a second. “Aw right, yeh, no, I won’,” 
she promised, and skipped along. 

XIV 

The Ratkins’ two-room dwelling on the top floor was 
identical with the Mendels’. The furnishings of the 
room-of-all-affairs comprised one large table, one small 
table, four wooden chairs, a dilapidated green plush 
lounge, a gas stove, and a coal stove. The interior dec- 
orations consisted of a small looking-glass hanging on 
the wall between the two windows, just as at the Men- 
dels’, and several enlarged colored photographs of de- 
ceased relatives — relics of the Ratkins’ affluent days. 
The furnishings of the bedroom were a bed, a cot, a 
chair and a wooden egg-box for the family linens. On 
the floor reposed another remnant of their better days, 
a mat on which a white, straight-backed dog sat stiffly 
planted on a bright green background. 

The series of misfortunes which brought the Ratkins 
down in the world began with the loss, in quick suc- 
cession, of three children, which left them with only 
Abie and a pair of twin girls of eight. After that, 
as so often happens, there followed difficulties one upon 
the other, topped by a severe illness in Mr. Ratkin, 
which, truth to tell, left him slightly unbalanced. 
Mrs. Ratkin had been compelled to become janitress of 
the two tenements. When Mr. Ratkin finally recovered 
sufficiently to work, he went into the business of rag- 
picking and cashing old clothes in order to be able to 
carry out his physician’s prescription to stay in the 
“fresh air.” 


ELIAS 


79 


Mr. Ratkin's odd sing-song cry, “I cash clothes !” was 
a source of amusement to East Side urchins while to 
older folks it proclaimed him a “crazy man.” To the 
latter Mr. Ratkin was indifferent ; and as for the former, 
the greater the number that followed him from street 
to street and the more heartily they laughed, the greater 
was his pleasure and the more of the Gemorrah sing- 
song did he put into his tune. 

Mrs. Ratkin was busy washing and combing the hair 
of the twins when Abie returned with the pickle. “Woe 
is me,” she cried, “what took you so long? Always 
when I send you somewhere it takes you a year to re- 
turn. You loaf around ” 

« “Aw, mama!” growled Abie, in no mood to be toler- 
ant of criticism. 

Mrs. Ratkin remained indifferent to her son's mood. 
“How long does it take to go to the grocery store 
and back?” she nagged. “A year? You go and you 
come — not ” 

^Mama, you make me sick,” her son interrupted, then 
added sulkily to avert the outburst that her expression 
portended : 

“Aw, lemme alone,” and walked into the bedroom. 

The bedroom was his place of refuge when under 
attack by either parent. For the ceremony of a beating, 
Mr. Ratkin always had to extricate his son from the 
mass of junk under the bed ; the space under 
the bed served the Ratkin s as it did other 
East Siders as a garret. It was here that Abie 
had formulated plans for seeking vengeance upon his 
father for his brutality. His mother's gossip about the 
Mendels had sowed the seed of retribution. 

For some time Mrs. Ratkin silently concentrated her 


8o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


energies on her daughter's heads, saturating their hair 
with sugar water and twisting it into a row of perfectly 
made curls. The feat accomplished, she held them at 
arm's length and surveyed them with pride and pleasure. 
Removing the combings from the comb, she ordered 
Abie to go set the table for supper as Mr. Ratkin would 
soon be coming home, then to sweep the floor and 
straighten the chairs. ... In not discriminating in 
favor of the male of the species, the Ratkin household 
was an exception to most Jewish households. The men 
had to do housework. Mrs. Ratkin could not “tear her- 
self to pieces." “To be a janitor is enough for one 
piece of a woman," she would say. Mr. Ratkin thought 
it was best to humor her on that score; he helped and 
he compelled his son to do the same. 

Abie set the table. Service with the Ratkins also 
was a simple affair. When soup was served each was 
given an individual plate. For “dry" meals Mr. Ratkin 
alone was so graced, and Abie and the twins ate from 
pieces of newspaper, while Mrs. Ratkin, dispensing en- 
tirely with “the middle man,” consumed directly from 
the pot. 

At six o'clock Mr. Ratkin returned from his day of 
rags and old clothes besmirched and perspiring. Surely 
the unquestioning devotion of children is touching! 
The twins rushed to their half-witted father and clung 
to him ardently. Even Abie, who had suffered a severe 
licking at his hands the night before, sang out a cordial 
“hello.” Mrs. Ratkin was even effusive in her greeting. 
She and her husband, in fact, were happily mated. Mr. 
Ratkin took her scoldings and naggings good-naturedly. 
Only upon Abie did Mr. Ratkin practice head-of-the- 
house discipline. He was determined that his son should 


ELIAS 


81 


“grow up a person” even if he, the father, had to kill 
the boy to effect it. Whereas about his wife Mr. Ratkin 
would say good naturedly : “Is schon far fallen ” mean- 
ing his discipline would avail nothing. And Abie, his 
boy spirits cramped within the confines of a pig pen, 
was indeed a trial. 

Mr. Ratkin washed and spluttered and every now and 
then stopped to remark upon some trifle. Soon supper 
was served. Mr. Ratkin was the first to taste of the 
pickle. “Pooh,” cried he, spitting out. 

Abie stole a swift glance at his father’s wry face. 
At the same moment Mrs. Ratkin emptied her mouth- 
ful. Immediately the twins did the same. They all 
made wry faces. Poor Abie edged away from his 
father, and when Mr. Ratkin made a slight move in his 
chair, he recoiled so violently that Mr. Ratkin was given 
a clue. Aha! 

“Who went for the pickle?” he demanded, looking 
at his son sideways. “The sonny, I suppose.” He 
turned his full face upon the boy. 

“Woe is me!” cried Mrs. Ratkin, who had also made 
a shrewd guess. “It must have fallen in the gutter.” 

Abie sprang to his feet and made a dash for safety. 

The father rose. His color was high and so was his 
indignation. He pointed to the chair Abie had vacated. 
“COME HERE!” he shouted. 

Abie remained in the bedroom doorway. 

“I didn’ do it for spite,” he said in tears, “it earned 
out from my hand, so don’ che hit me.” 

“I WANT THAT THERE SHOULD BE QUIET 
HERE!” Mr. Ratkin thundered, continuing with one 
long finger to point to Abie’s vacant chair. Mrs. Rat- 
kin, fearful of violence, begged both to be quiet. When 


8 2 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


her husband grew wild Mrs. Ratkin invariably became 
mild. These two understood the psychology of family 
happiness. 

Abie stood dismally devising plans for the termina- 
tion of his misery and wishing he had not waited so long 
to take matters in hand. He hoped the policeman would 
"pull” this papa of his. 

“Why did you not tell me it fell down?” asked Mrs. 
Ratkin gently, as she rose to wash the pickle. Abie 
made no reply. Going back to table she said: “Come 
and sit down already.” Abie glanced at his father. 
His lowered eyes looked too ominous, and Abie did not 
budge. “Nu, come Abie, you must soon go and light the 
gas in the halls.” Mrs. Ratkin gave her husband a 
glance that was meant to say: “Here is reason enough 
for granting him immunity.” Mr. Ratkin looked non- 
committal. Abie moved cautiously back to his chair. 
Scarcely had he sat down when Mr. Ratkin turned 
swiftly and punched him in the arm. “There, that's 
what you get for shouting at your father!” he cried. 

Springing from his seat Abie glared at his father, 
his heart fairly bursting with the desire for vengeance. 

“For God's sake let him alone — I will perish!” cried 
Mrs. Ratkin with so much fervor that Mr. Ratkin set- 
tled into passivity. All was quiet. Abie reseated him- 
self and swallowed his meal in silent tears. 

When Abie was out of the room lighting the gas in 
the halls, Mr. Ratkin soliloquized: 

“All the neighbors send their boys to peddle papers; 
I keep my son like the apple of my eye, and he shouts 
at me!” Since his conscience told him he had been un- 
duly severe with the child he spoke in a genuinely ag- 
grieved tone to forestall his wife's nagging. 


ELIAS 


S3 


“Who — who sends their boys to peddle papers?” de- 
manded Mrs. Ratkin. “Nu, and lighting the gas is no 
w r ork? When you get it into your head to pester the 
boy, you do it without measure.” She rose and began 
to clear the table. 

Mr. Ratkin faced about angrily. 

“Jakie Mendel does not peddle papers maybe, no, 
what, nu ? You always want to make me out for crazy.” 

Mrs. Ratkin went on with her work as she said: 

“Mrs. Mendel is a high-tone lady, a Deitschke. It 
would not suit her to work for her children. Abie has 
a plain woman for a mother.” 

How could Mrs. Ratkin know of the chain of circum- 
stances which had linked Sarah to the world of Useful- 
Women-By-the-Day ? She knew of Sarah’s work at the 
butcher’s, but that, she and the neighbors agreed, would 
be short-lived, for was it to be expected that a Deitschke 
would remain at mean labor indefinitely? The Russian 
Jew of this class nurtures contempt for the German 
Jew because of his assumption of superior culture, and 
the German Jew looks down on the Russian Jew because 
of his alleged crudeness. A state of internal anti- 
Semitism ! 

Mr. Ratkin, ignoring this point, insisted that Jakie’s 
father was as rich as his own son’s father; Mrs. Ratkin 
remained silent, and there was an end of the dispute. 

In the hall of the front tenement Abie met Minnie 
going on an errand to Mira. Seeing Abie’s eyes were 
red-rimmed, she sang teasingly : “Cry baby !” and so say- 
ing dodged him. Abie, however, was in no mood for 
belligerency. 

“Uh, my papa hollered on me coun a the pickle.” 

Minnie was at once sympathetic. 


8 4 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Yell?” she asked, drawing closer to him. 

He contemplated his shoe tops while she contemplated 
hers. 

“You know where,” he said. “So will you take me?” 

The two looked at each other. Minnie understood. 

“It’s by the comer — down by the street.” She pointed 
to the right, “Where we turn in by the butcher, and 
then two blocks by the other way.” 

Abie tried to grasp her directions for reaching the 
Essex Market Court. 

“Kin I go now?” he asked. 

“Uh, no, it’s only open in the morning. The judge 
ain’ there now.” She was astonished at his ignorance 
on the subject. 

“So I’ll go in the morning,” he concluded, resolving 
to make her act as guide. The two parted. Abie fin- 
ished lighting the gas and went immediately to ask his 
mother’s permission to go out on the street. Permission 
granted, he proceeded in search of Essex Market Court 
and met Minnie returning from Mira’s. She pointed 
out the court house to him. 

“Ugh, is that it? I thought it was annader place. 
I sawn this place twenty million times.” 

“You go in there.” Minnie pointed to the front door. 

Walking home they covered in their conversation a 
range of philosophy from kites to cares. 

XV 

Abie started out on his mission of vengeance at eight 
o’clock the next morning; rather early for school, his 
father and mother thought, though making no comment. 
At the street door he waited in vain for Minnie. But 


ELIAS 85 

soon he left. Since he knew the location of the court 
house she was not indispensable. 

Shortly afterwards Mr. Ratkin sallied forth for the 
day’s bread-winning. 

Abie had a long wait at the court house before it gave 
signs of life. About ten o’clock a giant policeman ap- 
peared in the doorway and ordered the urchin to move 
on. 

“Kin I go in?” he asked. 

“What do you want to go in for?” 

“There’s a man, he always licks me. I wanna tell the 
judge on him and get him arrested.” 

The policeman looked down on the complainant half 
mockingly, half questioningly. At that very moment 
Abie’s father’s voice sang: “I cash clothes.” Abie’s 
mouth remained open in the act of a word unsaid. Then 
he cried excitedly: 

“Come — come on !” and made several hurried steps, 
motioning the policeman to follow. “That’s him ! 
That’s the man who licks me. He murders me.” 

The policeman impelled by good-nature and curiosity 
followed the boy around the corner. There stood Mr. 
Ratkin, his head raised to a top-story window, from 
which leaned a woman. “I cash clothes.” He might 
have been serenading the lady so much melody did he 
put into the refrain. 

“There! That’s him!” cried Abie all aquiver with 
excitement. 

Mr. Ratkin beheld his son. His refrain snapped and 
broke. Words were too feeble to express his astonish- 
ment. He merely gaped. 

“Move on !” the policeman growled, swinging his 
club. 


86 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“But he licks me,” Abie protested, with an appealing 
look up at his possible Redeemer. 

“What did he say? What does he want?” Mr. 
Ratkin asked Abie. 

“He says if you lick me he’ll get you arrested.” 

In a flash Mr. Ratkin discarded his old clothes-and- 
rags bag, drew in a deep breath and pounced upon 
His Own. The policeman saw fit to exercise his prov- 
ince. He collared Mr. Ratkin and forced him along. 
Abie made off. 

Mr. Ratkin was sentenced to one night in the Essex 
Court lockup, regardless of his gesticulations and en- 
treaties. He had struck a child, it was his turn now 
to be struck by the hand of the Law. 

In gloomy speculation as to the outcome of his ven- 
geance now that it was accomplished, and sorely beset 
by misgivings, Abie wandered aimlessly through the 
streets until driven home by hunger. 

Little by little Mrs. Ratkin learned what had taken 
place. She gasped. She choked. She turned blue in 
the face. And, what was more, she was speechless! 
Her unprecedented speechlessness was most ominous to 
the petrified Abie. 

“I didn’ done it myself. The policeman made — Min- 
nie — ,” he whimpered, shuffling to the bedroom door and 
succumbing to tears. 

Mrs. Ratkin’s eyes showed that her soul was rolling 
up its sleeves for the ultimate, the beating that Abie 
deserved. She sprang upon him fiendishly. 

“Mama — ma ! I didn’ do it,” Abie wedged in when 
she had to stop for breath. “Minnie Mendel told me. 
She took me. Uh, mama, don’ hit me, don’ hit me !” 

Minnie Mendel ! Aha ! Then that black-yeared Sarah 


ELIAS 


8? 


had delegated her corrupt daughter to besmirch the Rat- 
kin family name as she had besmirched her own! A 
mitigation of Abie’s crime, yet the blows continued to 
descend until Mrs. Ratkin’s wind and muscle gave out. 
She tottered to the lounge and sank down wailing. How 
could she look that Mendel woman in the face? What 
demon had possessed that loafer of hers to commit such’ 
a foul deed, to bring such a curse upon his innocent 
father’s head, a father who disciplined him only that 
he might sow the seed of a golden manhood, the father 
who picked rags for him, who did not send him to 
peddle papers like other fathers, like the Mendel father, 
for example? 

Abie lay on the bed sobbing. The twins howled. 

But sobs and sighs, Mrs. Ratkin bethought herself, 
were no solution of her grave problem. She ought to 
go to court at once. 

Abie came forward with expert information: 

“The station-house is closed already,” he said. 

His mother glared at him. 

“You loafer you — you nothing you — you piece of 
manure, if you say another word, I will give you a blow 
that you will have to gather your teeth from the floor.” 

Brooding silently Abie accompanied his mother and 
twins on the errand of reclamation. 

The court house was closed. 

“See I told you so,” quoth Abie. A blow silenced him. 

The Ratkins returning from the court house met Sarah 
Mendel in the hall returning from her work at Mrs. 
Finkelstein’s. On the spur of the moment Mrs. Rat- 
kin resolved to have it out with “that woman,” to fling 
in her face her pernicious influence on the neighbor- 
hood, the pernicious influence of her ugly Minnie, and 


88 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

incidentally to forestall a social comeback from Sarah. 

Mrs. Ratkin’s bill of complaints ended with Minnie’s 
latest misdeed. Abie, she said, would never of his own 
accord have thought out such a thing as to send his 
father to Sing-Sing. Sing-Sing! Never had the neigh- 
borhood heard of the place until Sarah brought it to their 
innocent notice. 

Abie slunk into a comer. The twins clung frantically 
to their mother’s skirt. A butcher’s boy passing, at- 
tracted by the loud voice, was the first to stop and listen ; 
others followed his example. Tenants opened doors, 
stuck out heads, and were drawn to the scene. A yel- 
low, shrivelled old woman with a dark gray shawl over 
her head, made her way falteringly through the hall to 
the stairs. 

“Fui! Fui!” she mumbled. “Jewish women should 
quarrel so! It does not suit Jewish women to quarrel 
so.” The butcher’s boy laughed and scampered off. 
Some of the audience smiled. 

The old woman spat out once, twice, thrice as she 
tottered up the stairs. Sarah looking after her was re- 
minded of her mother ; a peaceful old-country family 
scene flitted across her consciousness. She turned and 
mounted the steps as quickly as her tired feet would' 
carry her. 

“You think,” Mrs. Ratkin hurled after her, “you can 
hide your own shame by bringing the same shame upon 
other people’s heads. You think maybe I don’t under- 
stand. But everybody in the whole neighborhood knows 
I am an honest, respectable woman who works along 
with her husband. But you, what do you do? You send 
your good, pious husband to Sing-Sing. Fui! Shame 
on you!” 


ELIAS 89 

Sarah shrinking within herself disappeared in a bend 
of the stairs. 

Mrs. Ratkin turning to the remaining auditors began 
to tell of the awful character of the Sarah Mendel 
woman. One by one they dropped away. 

When Sarah did day's work, Minnie served as the 
charwoman. Thursdays she scrubbed for the Sabbath. 
Little East Side children talk of having to do “my 
scrubbing,” “my washing.” Minnie had no knack for 
scrubbing. Scold her as one would, she invariably got 
herself wet, even to her shoes and stockings. The first 
sight to greet Sarah was a sopping Minnie, and it re- 
quired less than this to kindle her anger to white heat. 
She could scarcely contain herself. She wanted to strike 
the child. The temptation was so great that she had 
to look away. 

Ida and Bubbele playing near the window where the 
floor was scrubbed but not dry tried to rise but slipped 
and fell. Bubbele screamed. Her mother hushed her 
up. The child again tried unsuccessfully to get to her 
feet; she burst into a howl. Sarah was beside her- 
self. 

Minnie knelt in a puddle of water, scrubbing-brush in 
hand. 

“Look at the water in the pail. It is filthy!” Sarah* 
glared at her daughter, who wondered what had brought 
her mother home so cross. 

“It's the last piece, I don' need no clean water.” 

Sarah swooped down upon the pail, carried it to the 
sink with a furious gesture, poured out the water and 
refilled the pail. Minnie frightened, began to cry. 

“Look,” Sarah shouted, “look how wet you are!” and 
she pulled roughly at Minnie's dress. 


90 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“Oh, mama!” 

“Cry a little! Cry! You — — ” Sarah broke off in 
an honest effort to control herself. 

A sobbing Minnie rose from the floor and walked 
into the bedroom. When a child of eight has scrubbed 
two floors, has laid clean newspaper over a table she 
has scoured, and over a stove she has polished; and has 
prepared supper for six — well, it is rather hard to be 
scolded instead of praised. Minnie sobbed harder and 
harder. 

Sarah opened the floodgates of her heart. 

“A thousand times I told you not to tell Abie about 
the court — a thousand times. And you told him. You 
must have told his mother, too, because she knows. Or 
maybe Abie told her. You took Abie to the court to 
arrest his father. What devil of a child are you?” 

Minnie gazed wide-eyed and started to make denial. 
Her mother shrieked at her to be still. Minnie turned 
ashen white and sobbed so hard that her small frame 
shook. She fell silent from exhaustion* 

The two younger children played quietly to ward off 
their mother’s wrath from themselves. 

Sarah finished scrubbing the floor, then utterly worn 
out seated herself at the window. 

“God, my God!” she thought as she gazed out upon 
the dingy red of the rear tenement. “Will it be like 
this forever? Work — slave — for what? What have 
we? A child like Minnie must scrub and clean, and I 
must go out to work for strangers. Elias is not well, 
Jacob must peddle papers, and yet we have not enough' 
for shoes. And a foul tongue like the Ratkin woman’s 
dares yet to besmirch me!” She was racked to the very 
depths of her being. 


ELIAS 91 

When Elias came home he found Minnie red-eyed, 
hunched up on the bed. 

“What is the matter?” 

Minnie burst into sobs again. 

“Mama — mama, she blames me. She says I told out to 
Abie. I didn’ do it at all. I didn’ take him by the court. 
He was hisself.” She could say no more. Elias was dis- 
turbed and puzzled. Sarah, conscience-smitten for her 
onslaught upon the child, read reproof in Elias’s glance. 

“You have something to say, too!” She rose from her 
seat with an infuriated look, and grabbing her shawl 
rushed out, slamming the door behind her. Crying all 
the way, she walked to Mira’s. 

Elias was bewildered. He shrugged his shoulders and 
sighed. After waiting nearly an hour for Sarah to 
return, he and Minnie, whom he gently asked to help 
him, set the table and after supper cleared and washed 
the dishes. 

When the children were asleep and all was quiet in 
the home, except for the ticking of the clock, Elias 
seated himself at the window. He gazed out on the 
rear tenement now black in the darkness. 

“It is hard on her,” he reflected. “To-day she was 
by the woman to work. She is not used to such a life 
from home. She is a refined woman, of a good family. 
It is terrible. What shall I do? Will it always be like 
this? How hard! What a hard life!” He recalled 
the notion prevailing “at home” that the streets of 
America were paved with gold which, to own, one had 
only to pick up. 

Across Elias’s thoughts there swept a plaintive croon- 
ing from a home in the rear tenement. A woman was 
singing her baby to sleep. 


92 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“America is dock a goldena Land; 

Men darf nur zein sehr reich 

He wiped the tears from his eyes. 

Long after he had retired, Sarah returned accom- 
panied by Jacob whom she had met on the street. Elias 
called to her saying supper had been left for both of 
them on the stove. 

“A pretty thank you,” was Sarah's sarcastic reply. 

Nothing more was said, and soon the lights were 
turned out for the night. 

XVI 

To Mrs. Ratkin, whose heart bled for her schlimas el- 
dicker (unlucky) husband, an eternity seemed to elapse 
as she and the children waited for the doors of the 
court house to open. What, she wondered, keeping her 
eyes fastened on Abie as if to probe his soul, could so 
suddenly have turned him vicious enough to play his 
own father so foul a trick! “A healthy boy — a smart 
boy in school — what devil got into him!” She eased 
her feelings by plaguing him. He should set his hat 
straight, he should tie his shoe-lace, ht should stand on 
both his feet, he should look there and not here. 

At last, trembling with fear and fury, Mrs. Ratkin 
was facing the judge. She made her appeal in Yid- 
dish, plus vehement gesticulations. Now and then to 
intensify her meaning, she had recourse to an English 
word or broken phrase — “boy chick” — “f adder” — “lock- 

* ‘America is a golden land ; 

One needs but be very rich.” 


ELIAS 


93 


hop.” The “boy chick” being Abie, son of the man ar- 
rested yesterday. To Mrs. Ratkin there could be onty 
one man that had been arrested yesterday. The inter- 
preter unravelled the complications and told her to go 
to the street, where her husband would join her. 

A legal trick to get rid of her! She expostulated. A 
policeman dumped her out. Hard were Mrs. Ratkin's 
feelings against Columbus and his Medena (land) ; she 
was ready to curse and swear when, to her amazement, 
her spouse emerged from the court house. 

He blinked. The street seemed strange, his family 
strangers. He displayed no sign of recognition. His 
odd behavior silenced even the twins, who held back 
from greeting him. Mrs. Ratkin looked shrivelled and 
aged. Her troubled eyes could make neither head nor 
tail of her husband. She was wretched. Abie slunk be- 
hind the group, to the side of it, wherever he could 
dodge observation. 

They walked homeward automatically. By degrees 
the sense of strangeness wore off. Mr. Ratkin spoke 
to the twins, Mrs. Ratkin stopped to brush her hus- 
band's coat. Finally the wedded two launched upon the 
utmost — the culprit Abie, of whose presence the father 
was not yet aware. 

Mrs. Ratkin asserted Abie's innocence. It was all 
“that Minnie, that Mendel woman’s Minnie’s fault.” 
The boy could never have thought of such a thing as 
going to court ; the girl had talked him into it, in fact, 
she had compelled him to go there. “Nu, how do you 
like such chutzpeh (cheek) for a mother to influence 
a child to do such a thing!” Mr. Ratkin was not to 
be easily convinced. 

“I was a boy, too, nu, why did no mother's girl in- 


94 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


fluence me to arrest my father? I tell you, that boy 
is a loafer through and through/’ He smacked his lips 
with appetite for the beating in store for the culprit. 

“Itzick,” Mrs. Ratkin begged, divining her husband’s 
intentions, “I beseech you, let there be peace in the house 
over the Sabbath.” She affected extreme weakness. 
“Upon my word, I have no strength to stand on my 
feet. Yesterday I told that Mendel woman just what 
I think of her and her Germankeit, and her ugly Min- 
nie, and I aggravated myself so, I did not sleep all night. 
I have no strength to stand more.” 

The twins listening earnestly wished matters would 
adjust themselves, so that their parents would take heed 
of their august presence. The apples of their parents’ 
eyes, they were hardly accustomed to being slighted. 

There was silence. Abie thought he was missing con- 
versation and stealing closer was spied by Itzick Ratkin, 
whose angry flush did not escape Mrs. Ratkin. “Hold 
yourself back,” she shouted to her husband and in the 
same breath to Abie: “Run.” Abie ran, and Mr. Rat- 
kin, of necessity, “held himself back.” 

Abie sauntered along a few yards behind the others, 
his hands in his pockets, his head sunk low, his eyes 
fixed on the pavement. He was thinking hard. A 
wretched life, lickings, lickings, all the time lickings. He 
hated his father. Life on earth was hell. He would 
seek heavenly refuge under the wheels of the Madi- 
son Street cars. In the clutch of this strengthening re- 
solve, he lost sense of his whereabouts and failed to ob- 
serve that his father, as they drew nearer their home, 
was seeking a second opportunity. Several feet from 
their door he made a dash for the boy, but the mother’s 
shriek, “Itzick!” was a timely warning to Abie, who 


ELIAS 95 

dodged his father's fist by the merest slice of good luck. 

“God!" cried Mrs. Ratkin. 

Abie ran until he was certain he was out of the dan- 
ger zone, then stopping to get his bearings, he turned 
towards Madison Street. It was the lunch hour. He 
met Minnie coming from school. 

Her heart pounded angrily at sight of him. Never 
would she speak to that liar again. Abie instantly sensed 
her mood. However, he did not intend to make his 
exodus from this world without explanation. He barred 
her passage. 

“Get out of my way! You're a liar! You told your 
mama I telled you about us, and I showed you where. 
You're a liar!" She spoke unrestrainedly, her feminine 
intuition telling her she was safe from rebuff. 

“I didn’ said nothin'," Abie wailed in denial. “My 
mama, she sawn yous all gone in the Essick Market 
Court that day, she told my papa, I heard it wid my 
own ears, and my mama she said I shouldn' said noth- 
ing to you, that she sawn yous, but she did. I did not 
said you took me. All the time she blames it on me." 
Tears of injury gathered in the boy's eyes. Abie was 
weary, world weary; East Side children do get world 
weary. 

The boy’s tears melted Minnie’s little heart. She 
made no reply. Automatically they walked on together. 

“I'm gonna get runned over; sick of it; hope I die," 
Abie said as if to himself, then reasserted for Minnie's 
ears : “I'm gonna go and get runned over by the Madi- 
son Street car." 

Minnie became alert. 

“So you’ll get dead." 

“I don’ care. I wanna.” 


96 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie grew penitent. 

“I'll be sorry,” she confessed in a low voice. 

Silence. 

Instead of turning the usual corner, they walked 
straight ahead. Abie was tired, his feet ached. 

“Let’s go in and sit down on the rock,” he suggested. 
The rock was a large stone in an air-shaft, so named 
by the children of the neighborhood. It was big enough 
to hold them both. For a few minutes they sat in 
silence. Abie toyed with a button on his jumper; Min- 
nie outlined the pattern of her checked dress with her 
forefinger. 

“I wisht my papa dies, I hate him,” said Abie. 

A brief pause. 

‘*You ain’ gonna go by the car?” urged Minnie. 
Abie’s suicidal intent worried her tremendously. 

“So when I die, you’ll be sorry?” 

The tears started to Minnie’s eyes. She pleaded earn- 
estly: “Don’ go by the car, Abie, then I’ll speak to you 
my whole life.” 

Abie sat hunched up, his hands squeezed tight in his 
lap, his shoulders curved. His lips were parched, his 
eyes red-rimmed, his face worn and pale. He gazed 
into space. 

“So, when I get a „man,” he asked after a silence, 
“will you marry me, Minnie?” Minnie, whose little 
heart went out to him in an abundance of pity, said 
softly and a little diffidently: “Yeh, Abie,” this time 
without the usual proviso, “if you be a teacher.” 

From a window of the tenement heights a newspaper 
bundle came flying through the air, opening and scat- 
tering in all directions diversified rubbish, chicken guts, 
fish guts, plain garbage embellished with dust. 


ELIAS 


97 


A goodly portion landed on the children’s heads and 
in their laps. Horrified they jumped up and shook of? 
the filth, and simultaneously turned their gaze upward. 

“You dirty rotten pigs,” they cried, addressing the 
windows, “you should go to hell and die!” Thus re- 
lieved they abandoned the air-shaft. 

The factory whistles blowing one o’clock gave Min- 
nie an awful shock. Too late for home, too late for 
afternoon session! Abie proposed they go to Rutgers 
Street Park “to sit,” and Minnie consented after some 
persuasion. By three o’clock, when they left the Park 
together, Minnie’s counsel had prevailed and the would- 
be suicide was decided to endure his domestic sufferings 
until he “got a man.” In the hall of the front tenement 
they parted, promising to meet again in the evening. 

>i < ***** * 

When by twenty minutes past twelve Minnie was not 
yet home from school Sarah, much concerned, opened 
the door to listen for her footsteps. By half-past twelve 
she was all unstrung, and sat wringing her hands in 
despair. From Jacob, his mouth filled with bread and 
cheese, came the consoling statement that Minnie had 
probably been detained by the teacher to clean the black- 
boards, the “best girl,” he explained being assigned that 
honor now and then. 

“Would it be just at noontime?” 

“ Only at noontime,” prevaricated Jacob. 

Since it seemed quite plausible that the teacher had 
at last discovered the “best girl” in Minnie, the mother 
felt somewhat relieved. 

Sarah was just deciding to leave her seat at the win- 
dow and go watch for the child on the street when 
Minnie bounded in breathless and excited. Minnie im- 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


98 

mediately poured out the tale of Abie's suicidal intent 
and her truancy. Sarah listened, with odd feelings stir- 
ring in her breast. This child of hers was queer ly com- 
plex: more than a baby and more than a grandmother. 
Sarah sighed. Her mother’s silence encouraged Min- 
nie to lean lovingly against her. 

“Ma,” she said toying with Sarah’s hair, “Abie and 
I am gonna get married when he gets a man and I am 
big like you.” 

“Go get something to eat.” Sarah dropped her eyes. 
She was annoyed. 

Minnie, though she could not understand why, sensed 
her mother’s displeasure. In silence she cut herself a 
piece of bread and took a brown senile-looking banana, 
one of a penny “job-lot” of eleven, and began to munch it. 

As for Abie, he brought tears of gratitude to his 
mother’s eyes when he put in his appearance. There was 
no telling, was Mrs. Ratkin’s opinion, what next such 
a loafer as her Abie could do, even to himself. She 
sent her husband a mute appeal for peace, which he 
respected. 

So there was harmony in the Ratkin home for the 
Sabbath. 

As a new form of punishment Mr. Ratkin refrained 

from talking to his son for several days. “Tell papa ” 

Abie would say to his mother; “Tell your son ” Mr. 

Ratkin would say to his wife. 

XVII 

The combined income of the Mendel family was not 
destined to bring an abatement of Sarah’s worries. So 
many different needs had accumulated that the money 


ELIAS 


99 


seemed to fly immediately that it came to nest. In ad- 
dition Elias ailed and she herself had a constant pain 
in her side. 

But a gentler spirit was born in the weary Sarah. In- 
stead of her ire, Elias now roused her compassion ; he 
seemed so dispirited and unwell. She would sit for 
hours at a time staring into vacancy as if to discover 
ways out of their distress. She never took Elias to 
task any more, or even rebuked the children. 

One day Minnie bouncing in from the afternoon ses- 
sion knocked over Ida who was standing at the door 
shaping a sheet of newspaper into a fireman's cap. Ida, 
as she scrambled to her feet, besought Foxy to take 
vengeance for her. “Sig em !” she cried. Foxy forth- 
with drew himself up at attention, barked and seemed 
ready to carry out his Young Royalty's command. Bub- 
bele stirred in her sleep. 

“Ssh!” Sarah called to the belligerent trio as she tip- 
toed to the bedroom to peep at the baby. All was quiet. 
Sarah tiptoed back to her seat at the window. Foxy 
relaxed. Minnie went to wash her hands and Ida in 
need of consolation, cried sulkily, dropping the news- 
paper: “Ma — ma, I'm tired." She fetched a long sigh 
and Sarah, who saw she really looked tired, did not 
repel her when she climbed into her lap. Mothers of 
Sarah's generation have their demonstrativeness re- 
served for the very special occasions. 

Minnie, attracted by the cosy picture Ida and her 
mother made, squatted on the floor beside them. Along 
came Foxy and sprawled himself luxuriously next to 
her. 

“Mama, tell her to go away!" sulked Ida. Ida was 
not one to dismiss a grudge readily. 


IOO 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Be still children !” Sarah pleaded gently. 

They lapsed into silence. 

Mechanically Sarah began to hum a Yiddish lullaby, 
rocking Ida in her arms. The children, affected by the 
mournful tune and their mother’s unwonted serenity, 
listened spellbound. But soon Sarah broke off to wipe 
her tearful eyes. 

“Ah, ma, sing some more!” coaxed Ida sleepily. 

But Minnie, who had been scrutinizing her mother, 
interrupted with an observation : 

“Uh, ma, you got gray eyes.” Sarah’s eyes had been 
her pride. She felt somewhat embarrassed. “Ain’ it, 
mama?” urged Minnie. 

“No,” Sarah exclaimed with exaggerated indigna- 
tion engendered by self-consciousness, “but my hair is 
gray.” It seemed to Minnie that her mother held her 
to blame. 

“Mama, your hair ain* gray. It’s brown. Gray is 
white-like, ain’ it?” Her mother’s affirmation did not 
come. “Your hair is all dark like mine,” continued Min- 
nie indignantly, as she held a strand of her own hair 
against her mother’s. Sarah seemed still unconvinced. 
Minnie fetched the small mirror from the wall between 
the windows and held it so that the faces and heads of 
both were reflected. “See now, ma, your hair am’ gray,” 
she reiterated, feeling she had refuted the charge. 

Sarah, glimpsing her sallow, haggard face in the mir- 
ror, felt her heart caught on the point of a stiletto. “At 
home they used to call me pretty Sarah!” she wailed 
inwardly. 

“Put the mirror back!” she cried passionately. Min- 
nie was startled. To her amazement her mother was 
crying. 


ELIAS 


IOI 


“What's a madder, mama?" cooed Minnie, grieved, 
puzzled and penitent. She held her hands out to take 
Sarah’s face between them. Sarah evaded the caress. 

“Put it back, I tell you," she repeated. 

Sarah was crying harder when Minnie came back 
to her side. The child was miserable. 

“Mama, uh mama!" she cried impotently. 

Sarah stroked her head. “Oh, my girlie, may God 
grant you better fortune !" she moaned, rocking the 
sleeping Ida to and fro. 

Somewhere deep down in the mother’s heart lived a 
dread that her daughter’s lot would be like her own. 
“But," she would reassure herself, “she is an American, 
she will go to high school — to college — if I live to send 
her. Her life will necessarily be different from mine." 
But deep within her Sarah’s soul sighed. 

XVIII 

At dawn next day Sarah, careful not to disturb the 
others, dressed and hurried to the butcher’s for the Fri- 
day chicken-plucking. Elias, who rose an hour later, 
prepared his own coffee, and then called to Minnie and 
Jacob. Minnie, as she lay asleep, looked pale and 
pinched. Elias was glad that Sarah had dispensed with 
the child’s assistance at the butcher’s this time. It took 
a while before the two children began to stir in their 
beds. Finally Elias had to urge Minnie to hurry ; there 
were the rolls to purchase. She stirred and complained 
of a headache. Five minutes later she crawled out of 
the cot, looking even sallower than in sleep. Elias was 
worried. He called Jacob and told him to go on the 
errand. 


102 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Where’s Minnie ?” growled the boy, who could not 
allow for this deviation from the family custom. 

“Minnie has a headache.” 

“I got a headache, too.” He closed his eyes. It was 
characteristic of him to resort to subterfuge to gain ex- 
emption from a household task. Minnie threw an ex- 
asperated glance at his head snuggling in the pillow. 
She ran over, tore the pillow from under him and dashed 
away. Jacob was out of the bed in one bound and in 
pursuit. Elias intervened smiling upon both children. 
To restore peace he said: 

“Go, Minnele, run down to the grocery. I cannot 
wait for Jacob to dress. I will be late.” 

Minnie relinquished the pillow. She finished dress- 
ing and taking five cents from her father left. When 
she returned, breathless as always, she was pleased to 
find the cots and bedding removed from the room-of- 
all-affairs. Assuming that her father had been the good 
angel, she thanked him. Truth to tell, Jacob had con- 
tributed his aid. 

Elias, to Minnie’s surprise, got ready to leave before 
eating his rolls. 

“Papa,” she called, “you didn’ ate nothin’!” 

“I did.” 

“But not no rolls, and you didn’ ate no supper last 
night neither.” 

Jacob, who was combing his hair with the fraction of 
the family comb, looked from under a long wet fore- 
lock and growled disgustedly : 

“Chatterbox! All the time she asks questions.” 

Minnie, except for a bitter look, ignored him. 

“Ssh,” said Elias, to forestall a quarrel, and made for 
the door without confessing that while Minnie was gone 


ELIAS 


103 


he had had a spell of nausea. Minnie, too self-con- 
scious now to insist on his eating, joined Jacob in 
calling out: “Good-by, pop.” 

The second number on the program of Minnie’s daily 
activities took her into the bedchamber. “Get up, Ida! 
Get up Bubbele!” After a series of sleepy protesta- 
tions the children scrambled out of bed into the room- 
of-all-affairs, where Minnie attended to the entire cere- 
mony of Bubbele’s dressing and to the lacing of Ida’s 
shoes, a detail which, when it fell to Ida for execution, 
invariably introduced complications in the household ; 
the laces would get irretrievably twisted, and a howl 
would ensue that would bring the family in a flurry to 
extricate her from her miseries. 

Next in order was breakfast. At table Minnie appor- 
tioned the largest cruller to Jacob — a standing discrim- 
ination in his favor. When the repast was over she 
cleared the table, washed the dishes, instructed Ida and 
Bubbele how to behave until “Mama would come home 
from the butcher’s,” and finally left for school. 

She made a detour to the butcher’s, where she found 
Sarah imbedded in a mountain of feathers. Disregard- 
ing the presence of the butcher and his customers, she 
jumped over the sorry heap of plumage. 

“Mama,” she said, “papa didn’ waked me till late ” 

Sarah looked up in surprise from the speckled gray 
chicken in her lap. 

“A golden child she is!” passed through her mind. 
“I scold her so !” — Minnie’s nose still showed signs 
of the historic push — “and it is as if nothing happens.” 
A tender look came into Sarah’s eyes as she turned them 
on Minnie and said: “I do not need you. Just go to 
school.” 


104 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

Minnie stole a hasty kiss and jumped back over the 
mountain of feathers, which rose in a storm of pro- 
test. “Pooh, pooh !” the butcher and his customers 
cried, turning their heads away. The child laughed and 
skipped out, while Sarah looked after her lovingly, her 
eyes moist. The butcher gave Sarah a knowing wink. 

“Some girl !” 

“Yes, a girl and a half.” This last proceeding from a 
friend of Mrs. Ratkin’s, Sarah was somewhat dubious of 
its sincerity. 


XIX 

“Elias,” said Sarah, one hot spring evening as she 
finished washing the supper dishes, “the summer is nearly 
here again. I cannot stand another summer of bedbugs 
and roaches and worms. Maybe we can take other 
rooms.” 

Elias raised his eyes from the newspaper he was read- 
ing and attempted to answer, but only brought out thick, 
unintelligible sounds followed by a fit of coughing. 
When the spell subsided, he said : 

“When I cough, I get the taste of cigarettes,” and 
added gently: “Do you think it will be better some- 
where else? We cannot afford to pay much more than 
we are paying here, you know.” 

“Mira told me of two rooms on Madison Street which 
do not cost much and are better.” 

Elias resumed the perusal of his paper. 

“If you can find rooms you like better, take them, 
my wife,” he said with apparent apathy. 

Sarah, always resentful of Elias’s calm, which she at- 
tributed to indifference, flushed. Since the crucial ex- 


ELIAS 


105 

perience of the arrest, however, she refrained from dis- 
plays of irritation. 

“I am sick of this place without the vermin. That 
housekeeper, that Mrs. Ratkin, looks at me when she 
sees me as if she would take my eyes out. I never 
have the heart to bid her even the time of day since 
then. And I cannot tell you how it annoys me to see 
Minnie run around so much with that loafer Abie. 
Always she is with him — with him — whenever you 
see her. If at least they did not quarrel, but they 
do.” 

Elias raised his eyes and said : 

“Nu, where is the harm? If she does speak to him 
and if they do quarrel. They are children.” 

“Nu, yes, children. She neglects her school lessons, 
she is never in the house to play with her younger sis- 
ters and nothing. Anyway I do not like it.” 

Elias smiled at what was in the back of Sarah’s 
mind. 

“Do not be a foolish woman.” 

“If I am foolish, then I am foolish, that is all. But 
Minnie is now almost nine years old. The years fly. 
Soon she will be a grown-up girl. How long does it 
take for them to grow up?” 

Sarah grew suddenly melancholy. A mist covered 
her eyes. Her thoughts travelled across the Atlantic to 
her free-thinker lover, and she experienced a moment of 
strangeness to her surroundings — to Elias — to everything 
of her present life. With a deep sigh she rose and auto- 
matically took the one-legged clock from the shelf over 
the sink and wound it, then stood for a while medita- 
tively wiping her face on the end of her apron. After a 
time she said : 


106 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“I am going down to the children on the street. Shall 
I send you up some soda water?” 

Elias raising his brows slightly but keeping his eyes 
lowered, replied, again apathetically, Sarah thought, and 
to her keen annoyance : 

“If you want to.” 

Sarah took a cracked pitcher under her apron and left. 

“I will look for other rooms,” she said to herself. “He 
would be satisfied in a stable.” 

As Sarah closed the door Elias examined his handker- 
chief. A red stain. Blood! It had happened sev- 
eral times, but each time Elias had assured himself it 
was nothing and probably would not happen again. This 
time a tremor of fear shot through him. When he recov- 
ered he was glad Sarah had not seen the blood ; it would 
have frightened her. He sighed heavily, and wearily 
picked up his paper again, but he did not know what he 
was reading. 

On the way downstairs, Sarah met with a slight mis- 
hap; one of the steps gave way beneath her tread, and 
she fell nearly a full flight. Mrs. Ratkin, who happened 
to be on the floor below, spontaneously expressed con- 
cern. But Sarah, more than ever filled with disgust of 
the tenement, indulged once again in the luxury of un- 
restrained temper. 

“God mine,” she fairly hissed in Mrs. Ratkin’s face, 
as if the janitress were to blame for the rottenness of 
the building, “a person can kill himself here. How does 
one live already to get out of this verminated place!” 
She lifted her eyes to heaven. 

Mrs. Ratkin drew herself up to the dignified height of 
janitress. 

“Nu, really, if it does not suit you, why do you not 


ELIAS 


io 7 


move? The landlord will weep out of existence his 
third eye!” Going her way Mrs. Ratkin thought: “I 
hope they will move. I will tell the landlord she said 
they will move. She did say so — as much as said so.” 

Sarah realized she had committed an indiscretion. 
After all, she knew nothing definite about the rooms on 
Madison Street. Ignoring Mrs. Ratkin’s sarcasm, she 
passed, limping slightly. 

A group of children were circling round in the gutter 
to the rhythm of a doleful tune. On the edge of the 
sidewalk sat a group of women on wooden egg boxes, 
gossiping and watching with pride their progeny in the 
ring, whose voice or voices they thought to distinguish 
above the others. In momentary forgetfulness of their 
cares, they beamed with the love and pride of mothers 
the world over. 

Sarah discerned Ida and even — yes, even — little Bub- 
bele holding her sister’s hand, and circling gracefully 
round and round. 

“Go in and out the window — Go in and out the win- 
dow ” the children’s voices rang in plaintive discord. 

There was an unoccupied egg box near the curb; 
Sarah, however, seated herself on the doorstep, thereby 
giving cause for whispered comment. Aloofness such as 
this, though inspired by a shy reticence, made Sarah out 
a haughty superior to Mrs. Ratkin and her followers. 
Woe be to him who lacks the spirit of free-masonry 
which must animate all who cling to the same plank in 
life! 

“Blocking the way,” grumbled Mrs. Ratkin, emerging 
from the house. 

Sarah rose instantly, brought the egg box from the 
xurb to the doorstep, and placing it so that it would 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


to8 

not obstruct the passage, seated herself. More and hotter 
comment gathered. 

A great truck lumbering heavily, but at some speed, 
down the street caused diversion. Mothers shouted to 
their young to come in from the gutter. Ida and Bub- 
bele, surprised to hear Sarah’s voice, looked round. 

“Oo, ma!” they cried running happily to her, their 
pace set by Bubbele whose baby legs were not always 
equal to their task. 

Sarah wiped Bubbele’s mouth and ran her fingers 
through her hair to straighten it. “You have spots on 
your dress, and pull your stockings up,” she said to Ida, 
and next : “Where is Minnie ?” 

“She is wid Miss Lacey, and is gonna come right 
back.” 

Miss Lacey, a sweet young thing, the product of Up- 
per New York’s lap, had reached Minnie’s ken by way 
of Miss Liebman. Once when Minnie had gone to Miss 
Liebman’s home on an errand for Sarah, the young 
woman, attracted by her mature little ways, had engaged 
her in conversation. The visit resulted in Minnie’s be- 
coming eager to join a girls’ club at the Queen’s Daugh- 
ters, a neighborhood house. Sarah objected. “Settle- 
ment” smacked of charity. Charity was the last thing 
Sarah aspired to for her children. But Minnie’s insist- 
ence had finally wearied her into consent. 

Scarcely had Ida spoken when Minnie came skipping 
along, flushed and happy. 

“Uh, ma,” she began, “Miss Lacey ” Minnie was 

Miss Lacey’s devotee. 

“Your Miss Lacey!” Sarah interrupted testily, for if 
Sarah had nothing else against Miss Lacey, enough that 
she was a Gentile. Gentiles might be good but they at- 


ELIAS 


109 


tempted to proselytize and she preferred that her chil- 
dren steer clear of them. “Better go and buy your papa 
soda water/* 

With the cracked pitcher under her arm, Minnie went 
across the street for the two glasses of “vanilla** and 
returned with it still healthily sizzling. The pitcher 
passed from mouth to mouth for “sips.** Sarah refused 
the cup of good fellowship much to the childrens 
distress. 

Cautioning her not to trip on the broken step, Sarah 
despatched Minnie to her father with the refreshing 
beverage. 

Elias, who had quite forgotten about the proffered 
drink, was touched by Sarah’s thoughtfulness. He rose 
and poured out a scanty glassful for himself and offered 
the rest to Minnie. She took a few sips. “Kin I take 
the rest to mama?” she asked. 

Elias took her close to him and kissed her. “She is 
not like the other children,” he mused wistfully as he 
watched her step to the door as cautiously as a tight- 
rope walker. 

Sarah was pleased when Minnie brought the soda to 
her. 

“She is not like the other children,” thought she with 
mournful pride, “she is more like my family.” Her 
heart swelled with a passionate yearning for the future 
welfare of her daughter, in which bitterness at her 
own lot was mingled. How ugly, sordid, unsuited 
to the gentler promise of her girlhood was her life! 
If Minnie’s fate could only be in accord with the tradi- 
tion of ease and refinement of her mother’s side of the 
family — if only she would not marry an Elias! . . . 
Minnie would go through high school and through col- 


no 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


lege too; here, in America, girls became teachers, doc- 
tors, lawyers ; they married educated gentlemen — Minnie 
had a “golden head” — who could know what brilliant lot 
was in store for her! . . . Sarah’s eyes lighted on the 
drab tenement opposite, on the rusty fire escapes, littered 
with ragged, soiled bedding, on which lay babies asleep, 
then dropped upon the neglected children in the gutter 
and the long line of slovenly maternity edging the side- 
walk. And she wondered miserably what Fate really 
had in store for her child. 

XX 

Mrs. Ratkin informed the Landlord between hems and 
haws — for she shivered and she shook in the presence of 
her Mighty Superior — that Mrs. Mendel had declared 
her intention of moving. 

Nonchalance is unknown to the lowly. Always keyed 
up to a fear of the worst, Mrs. Ratkin could not under- 
stand how the Landlord, confronted with the possible 
loss of a tenant and of Ready Cash, remained so indif- 
ferent. He evinced not the least concern; on the con- 
trary, he passed to other details as if he had not heard 
the momentous news, and departed to secure his rentals 
without a word of comment on Mrs. Mendel. 

Uninformed Mrs. Ratkin! Her mind did not grasp 
the fact that her Mighty Superior, standing firmly on 
both legs, could afford to have a whole one removed, 
while she, tottering on only a fraction of a single weak 
leg, could not afford to have that fraction so much as 
threatened. 

She poured out her astonishment — mingled with dis- 
appointment — to her husband. 


ELIAS 


hi 


“A man should not care a bit about his houses! I 
tell him Mrs. Mendel will move — so Mrs. Mendel will 
move — and he says nothing; he walks up the stairs, and 
nothing !” 

Sarah made many efforts to find better rooms. Those 
on Madison Street recommended by Mira had the for- 
bidding quality of costing two dollars more a month; 
with that increment all calculations failed to produce 
an equation between income and expenditure. 

Though Elias was aware of her weary searches, he 
never inquired into the results — which did not pass un- 
noticed or unresented by Sarah. One Saturday she 
yielded to a nagging impulse to rouse him out of his 
lethargy. House-hunting during the week, she told him, 
with all her other duties, was hard for her; the family 
together ought to go and look on Saturdays. The inner 
quaking with which she put the proposal (since house- 
hunting might be considered an infringement of the Sab- 
bath) was evident in her manner and brought ready con- 
sent from Elias, who was moved tenderly by his wife's 
new-born fractional timidity. He loved her for it. 

They investigated every place displaying a “Room-To- 
Let” sign. But, alas, no rooms except two wretched ones 
in a basement were as cheap as those they occupied. At 
the end of the futile hunt Elias suggested that they 
should remain where they were. Sarah lowered her 
head, resentful and disheartened. 

“You are always satisfied.” 

“Satisfied?” Elias exclaimed. “I would rather live 
nicer, too, my wife, but — maybe when it gets busier I 
will get a dollar raise. Then we can afford to pay 
more.” 

Before Elias received a dollar raise, Sarah reflected 


II 2 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


bitterly, the bedbugs and roaches and worms and Mrs. 
Ratkin might commit murder upon the family ; she 
could increase their income sooner herself. “To-mor- 
row, ” she resolved, ‘Til ask Miss Liebman to get me a 
third Lady.” 

But during the night Elias was very ill, and the next 
morning he could not go to work. Nor could Sarah. 
Minnie was despatched with a message to the girls. Both 
Sarah’s and Elias’s earnings for the day were lost. 

The first of the following month the Landlord came 
for the rent, and Sarah paid it. Another month in the 
same rooms, with their long torturing hours of heat and 
pests! Sarah’s heart withered at the prospect. 

When Mrs. Ratkin observed that the name Mendel 
was missing from the list of delinquents whom she was 
to plague for rent during the month, she remarked to 
her husband, half in annoyance at still having to put up 
with “that Mendel” woman and half in satisfied spite that 
Sarah had not risen to better quarters: 

“They were not on the list of the others. She paid 
the rent. They will stay, I suppose. A black year on 
them!” 


XXI 

“I’m gone Sunday by Cooney Island to holler all sum- 
mer on a stand.” This news Minnie sprang on Abie in 
the yard as he was intently watching the efforts of a 
horse-fly to free itself from between his thumb and fore- 
finger. His attention was drawn from the fly only long 
enough for a casual glance at Minnie. 

“Let it alone, it hurts,” cried Minnie, slapping his hand. 
The insect, freed, flew off. 


ELIAS 1 13 

“Uh, you crazycat! Like a fly kin feel! J’ever!” 

“Sure! It hurts.” 

“You know?” he asked skeptically. “How do you 
know?” Abie was not satisfied with intuition. He re- 
quired pure reason. 

Having nothing for proof but her imagination, which 
told her that a fly squeezed between two fingers must 
suffer pain, Minnie was silenced. 

“I was by the country once and sawn lots — millions 
of big flies,” Abie boasted. “And I tore their wings and 
everything ” 

“I’m gone Sunday by Cooney Island to holler on a 
stand,” Minnie repeated, trying tactfully to change the 
painful subject. “I’m gone for the whole summer, 
and ” 

“It was by Brownsville. So my father took my sister 
and me. We picked all kind a flowers. So a girl, I 
gave her a scratch, so she gave me a punch, so I gave 
her a push, so she gave me a hack, so my father took the 
flowers and knocked them away.” Abie paused a mo- 
ment. “But he didn’t holler nothin’ ’bout the flies ” Ir- 
refutable proof that vivisection of flies was legiti- 
mate. 

“Was you ever by Cooney Island?” Minnie asked, 
eager to escape this topic of tortured flies. 

“How you gone?” The question as put, while an ad- 
mission that Abie had never been to Coney Island, also 
expressed his skepticism as to Minnie’s going. Though 
he had never caught her in a misstatement of fact, yet it 
was his way to require proof. 

How Minnie came to serve as a puller-in at Coney 
Island was the climax of many circumstances. 

In the first place, the butcher who employed Sarah 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


114 

had taken unto himself another wife, with the distinct 
understanding that the marital compact was to include 
concerted interest in the business and as the new spouse 
replaced Sarah at the job of plucking chickens, the Men- 
del income was reduced by nearly a dollar a week. Then, 
the bachelor girls, whose apartment Sarah cleaned on 
Sundays, had gone on their summer vacation for four 
weeks. (One man's meat is another man's poison.) 
Finally, Elias continued to ail. In spite of his valiant 
efforts to down his weakness, he was obliged every now 
and then to stay away from work, and so lost the day's 
wages. Though Elias's employer was a considerate man, 
he could only conform to the accepted rule in the labor 
market, according to which an employee is docked for 
absence. He, too, had to eke out a living. 

Sarah was compelled to borrow, now a dollar from 
Mira, now from a relative. But borrowing is a sorry 
business. The gift of delicacy in giving is confined to 
the very few. Sarah was miserable. 

However, in the balancing scale of human affairs, it 
chanced that a man and a woman, acquaintances of rela- 
tives of the Mendels, were wedded, and their union was 
to play a role in the Mendel economy. 

On a day in mid-July there descended upon Henry 
Street and ascended upon the Mendel family ample Riva 
and near-skeleton Morris, the newly-weds. 

Morris was a man whom idealism had emaciated. 
Dreaming of a college education he had worked days 
as assistant to a watchmaker and had studied nights. 
Several years of this regimen reduced him to blue glasses 
and the conviction that life was one Grand Damn Thing. 
He was meditating suicide about the time that Riva, 
ample of body and jovial of spirit, appeared in his board- 


ELIAS 


115 

ing house and by some odd fate fell in love with him. 
Via the “Missus” of the establishment, the lure of Pos- 
itive Comfort was held out to him if he would take 
Riva in marriage. He shilly-shallied. Marriage devoid 
of rpmance he deemed unbeautiful. But as in Riva’s 
Coney Island stand there loomed the possible realization 
of his dream of a college education, he one day early in 
July promised for all his life to love and cherish Riva. 
As the season was advancing, the New Alliance, upon 
Morris’s suggestion, decided that extra help was desir- 
able. Someone was needed to advertise the wares, to 
cry: “Peanuts! Candy! Ice-Cold Lemonade!” They 
mentioned their needs to the aforesaid relatives of the 
Mendels, and promptly Minnie was proposed: “a smart 
girl who can holler like gold,” they said. 

Elias, strangely, had not yet returned from work when 
the New Alliance made its ascent upon the Mendels on 
a Wednesday evening. The part of the shop in which 
he spent most of his time had once boasted a window 
which was now boarded up because the boss felt he 
could not afford to replace the broken pane; it would 
have cost fifty cents. The work-room was a strip of 
space running back from two windows facing Allen 
Street on a level with the tracks of the elevated trains. 
Even the more robust of the workmen found the thun- 
dering noise and dust raised by the passing trains a hard- 
ship. By the end of each day Elias’s strength was re- 
duced to nothing. Yet he had become accustomed to 
the homelikeness of the place and the friendliness of the 
boss, and shrank from making a change. Besides, what 
else could he do? Eight dollars a week! And how 
great was the fortune to be free from harassing worry 
about the Sabbath! 


1 16 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

The day had been stifling. Elias had pulled through 
his work only by the greatest force of will power. In 
the afternoon he could scarcely stand upright. At clos- 
ing time, just as the boss and a young helper were leav- 
ing (Elias was always the last to go), he uttered a 
hysterical shriek and went down on the floor in a heap. 
The boss and helper ran to his aid, and workers from an 
upstairs shop brought remedial measures for a faint — 
water and vinegar. When Elias came to, he was apolo- 
getic for having caused so much trouble and worry. The 
boss insisted on seeing him home. At the tenement door 
Elias apologized for not inviting him up ,* he was afraid, 
he said, that his wife would be alarmed. 

“I stayed for a chat with the boss,” he explained in 
response to Sarah’s inquiry. 

As to Minnie’s serving the utilitarian purpose sug- 
gested by the New Alliance, his opinion inclined neither 
one way nor another. He was too feeble for positive 
judgment. Sarah sensed apathy and was filled with re- 
sentment. “You have some idea,” she said with slight 
spirit. 

“Ask the child,” Elias said. “If she wants to, let 
her go.” 

Minnie just then bounced in from the street. Riva 
was disappointed at sight of the delicate little girl. It 
had not crossed her mind that she would find anything 
but a child replica of her beefy, blowzy self — a big one, 
a thick one, a fat one, as she might have put it in Yiddish. 
However, her need for a “puller-in” was great and the 
pay she intended to offer was small, so she turned 
to Minnie with inducements. “In Cooney Island you 
will see it’s wonderful,” she said. “Punch-and-Judy 
shows, and music, peanuts, soda and everything.” She 


ELIAS 


« 7 

looked down at the child's feet and turned to Sarah. 
“If she will stay all summer, I'll buy her a pair of yellow 
shoes, and I’ll present you with five dollars in advance. 
She can come Sunday and stay till school begins.” 

“Do you want to go, child?” askd Sarah. 

With her thumb in her mouth Minnie mumbled : 
“Yeh.” 

The deal was closed. The New Alliance was to call 
for Minnie the following Sunday. 

Thus Fate provided Riva and Morris with the “puller- 
in” for their refreshment-stand and Sarah and Elias with 
five dollars Cash on Delivery of their offspring, and Abie 
Ratkin with the surprise of surprises when a few days 
after she had made the announcement to his skeptical 
self, Minnie actually went off sandwiched between the 
fat Missus and the lean Mister. 

XXII 

Though no mention was made of the fact in the society 
columns of the New York press, the Mendel family, 
with the exception, of course, of Minnie, spent the sum- 
mer at their residence on Henry Street. Great Stress, 
after its temporary, half-hearted absence, became again 
a devoted intimate. 

Sarah might, perhaps, have fallen into her disagree- 
able ways again had not Elias continued to ail. From 
day to day he seemed visibly to shrink ; his step to be- 
come more leaden, his face paler and paler. One eve- 
ning, a few days after Minnie's departure for Coney 
Island, Sarah, standing beside the sink, turned unexpect- 
edly and saw him spit blood into it. She was terrified. 
Had he ever spat blood before? Elias confessed. 


ii8 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“Woe is me!” she cried, “there are the five dollars 
from Riva. Go to a doctor. How does a man spit 
blood for months and not do something ?” 

Spend money for a doctor! Elias would not hear 
of such a thing. It would pass away, he was sure; 
it was only the hot weather. 

But Sarah’s fears were not allayed. She confided 
in Mira. 

“If he will not spend money for a doctor” (Mira 
considered Elias parsimonious), “then you ought to 
make him stay at home some good day, some day when 
he is feeling well and not falling from his feet, and 
take him to the dispensary, a place where poor people 
are treated free by doctors.” 

Sarah shrank. “Poor people” recalled the Charities. 
She sighed with apprehension. 

“Nu, what are you sighing for? It is not so ter- 
rible.” There was more pity in Mira’s heart than in 
her words. 

Sarah proposed the dispensary to Elias. 

“Oh, Sarah,” he replied, “zolst du gesunt sein (thou 
shouldst be well), don’t fill my head with such non- 
sense. I do not feel so sick. It will pass.” He always 
pretended to feel better than he actually did, though 
several times within the next weeks he was compelled 
to stay away from work. 

But the black cloud lost a shade of its blackness. A 
more successful relative learning of the Mendels’ plight 
persuaded them to accept a loan of two dollars a week, 
and by the end of August Miss Liebman and her 
friends returned from their vacation. At the same 
time the hearts of Sarah and Elias were gladdened by 
happy postal cards from Minnie. “Thank God,” Elias 


ELIAS 


1 19 

remarked occasionally, “one of the children is having a 
pleasant time.” 

* * * * * * * 

In all parts of the metropolis people succumbed from 
the heat. The residents of the twin tenements, the Rat- 
kins setting the fashion, one after another — mothers, 
fathers, boys, girls — abandoned their rooms at night and 
dragged pillows and mattresses to the roof. 

One night, after having partaken too freely of ice-cold 
lemonade (lemonade with a history in which Abie played 
the leading role), Mr. Ratkin awakened his wife who, 
having worked hard that day, lay beside him on the roof 
steeped in the slumber of the worthy. 

“Wake up, wake up.” He shook her. “I feel bad.” 

Mrs. Ratkin woke up, and soon Mr. Ratkin went to 
sleep— his eternal sleep. 

The Mendels and other neighbors were awakened by 
Mrs. Ratkin’s unearthly shrieks. In a few moments 
Itzick Ratkin was carried to his home, and within the 
same space of time the home became crowded with men, 
women, and children of every sort, size, and shape. The 
physician, summoned by one cooler-headed man, dis- 
persed the crowd and upon examination pronounced Mr. 
Ratkin dead. The news spread like wild-fire, and the 
combined populace hurled itself upon the physician in in- 
credulity. But Itzick Ratkin was dead. Heart failure, 
was the unsatisfactory explanation. How Mrs. Ratkin 
mourned and moaned that her husband had not at least 
been sick — sick, so that she could feel the justification 
of his dying! 

******* 

Outside the front tenement a curious mob had 
gathered. 


120 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“It’s a funeral,” went about in whispers — a funeral 
variously speculated to be that of a child, a woman, an 
old man, an expectant young mother, a girl, and the j ami- 
tress’s husband. 

On the fringe of the crowd stood a thin little girl, her 
great gray eyes wide with astonishment. What was this 
gathering in front of her home? Who was in that un- 
beautiful coffin just then being carried out of the house? 

Minnie’s heart stood still. Edging her way closer, she 
saw Mrs. Ratkin, followed by Abie, who was followed 
by the twins, all mourning their loss. And when the 
crowd thinned out, there stood Sarah Mendel with eyes 
red from crying. Minnie ran up to her. 

“God mine, Minnie!” Sarah clutched her terror- 
stricken. What had brought her? Sarah could scarcely 
realize it was her own little child. Where had she come 
from so all of a sudden? She thought her safe at Coney 
Island. 

When Riva and Morris had called to take Minnie 
away, Sarah, overcome by nameless fears, had been loath 
to let the child go and had almost, at the eleventh hour, 
retracted her consent. Now her imagination leapt to all 
sorts of horrors. 

“What’s the matter?” she cried. “What has happened 
to you? Woe is me!” 

“Uh, ma, I’m so glad I’m home,” sighed Minnie, snug- 
gling in her mother’s skirts as she wiped away the tear* 
of homesickness. 

XXIII 

Upstairs came the explanation. 

It was under the supervision, in fact, at the dictation 
of Riva, that Minnie had sent home the postal cards tell- 


ELIAS 


121 


ing of her wonderful life in a whirl of Punch-and-Judy 
shows, which could “kill” one with the fun, and music 
enough to make one “deaf,” and good things to eat, 
enough to make one “burst.” 

The truth was, that while the Riva-Morris residence 
consisted of one whole room (rented for the season), in 
which they occupied the one real bed, Minnie's share in 
it was the floor softened by a few old coats, a sofa cush- 
ion, and a strip of cheese-cloth. Here, in the dead of 
night Minnie shed her honest tears of homesickness. Oh, 
how homesick she was! Her homesickness had begun 
the very moment the Henry Street tenement was out of 
sight. And how the weeks had intensified it! The few 
times the Alliance had found her crying they reminded 
her that five dollars for her services were already in her 
mother's keep and that yellow shoes and a dress in 
prospect were not to be despised. Perhaps had Minnie 
guessed how she was missed at home she would have 
made her escape regardless of these considerations. But 
little did she know that five minutes after she had left, 
Bubbele insisted that Minnie ought to be there to comb 
her hair, and Ida sulked on general principle, while when 
Elias returned from work the home seemed terribly 
empty to him; and Jacob at bedtime thought it was 
“funny kind a to lock the door without not Minnie be- 
ing in.” 

Abie too had missed her. He approached Ida and at 
the point of a wooden gun insisted on information as 
to when her big sister would be back. But Ida was 
a “dunce;” a year and a day were the same to her. 
Gee! 

In time he tackled Sarah. It was one day after his 
discovery of the Great Blessing. 


122 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


On East Broadway a man hauled a wooden box out 
of a basement. Abie, passing, saw and became curious. 
He waited for the man to descend, then cautiously 
peeped into the box. Oh, joy! lemons! speckled lem- 
ons, to be sure, some more speckled than other, but 
lemons nevertheless. He collected a few and was about 
to make off when the man reappeared, and so frightened 
him that the fruit fell from his hands. 

“Gu het, take ’em, little boy,” said the man. “You 
can come every day and take some.” 

After that the Ratkin family regaled themselves daily 
with the delicious drink made from the “good” parts of 
the lemons, and Mr. Ratkin began to see a redeeming fea- 
ture in his son, little dreaming that Abie’s lemons were 
to be his undoing. 

Returning one day with lemons galore, Abie, meeting 
Sarah, had an inspiration. He held out two, “good” 
sides up. “I got em for nothin’, ” he said as an induce- 
ment, because Sarah looked ready to refuse. “How?” 
asked Sarah. “From a man who knocks them away.” 
Elias had been ill that day; he had stayed away from 
work; cold water, lemon and sugar — “Er wet sick up - 
chapen die harz” (be refreshed) thought Sarah. She 
took the lemons and hid them under her apron. Her 
back was already turned. Abie’s courage took fire. 
“When is Minnie cornin’ back, Mrs. Mendel?” he asked. 

A swift change in the state of Sarah’s heart toward 
her benefactor. “Nu, loafer,” she said turning upon 
him, “is it your business? When she will come back, 
she will come back. You need someone to quarrel with 
maybe ?” 

“Fresh thing!” grumbled Abie, lamenting the waste 
of his lemons. 


ELIAS 


123 


As Saturdays and Sundays were the busiest days in 
Coney Island, the Riva-Morris corporation prepared an 
extra quantity of home-made lemonade on Fridays. It 
was a calamity, therefore, when one Friday evening the 
stick with which Riva compounded the savory beverage 
in a wooden wash-basin disappeared. Tears of vexation 
came to Riva’s eyes as she bent her profuse body to 
hunt in all corners of the cluttered room. Minnie had 
to crawl under the bed while she rummaged in the dis- 
order of the bed itself, then had to help her shove pack- 
ages, boxes and furniture from place to place, and finally 
was sent to ask the landlady if she had seen the stick. 
“Maybe Morris put it away,” suggested Minnie on re- 
turning from the landlady. But the frantic Riva would 
not wait for Morris. She had another solution. She 
rolled her sleeves up and made her arm do the rotatory 
work of the stick. 

Now Sarah and Elias were agreed about one thing; 
that Minnie’s sensitive stomach was an inheritance from 
her father. “The least thing makes her sick,” Sarah 
often complained. The sight of Riva’s dirty sweaty arm 
immersed in the lemonade — lemonade that people, Min- 
nie knew, would be drinking — lemonade such as she her- 
self had partaken of many times, turned her sick. She 
retched and vomited. 

Riva conveniently diagnosed her trouble as sea-sick- 
ness — for were they not close to the ocean ? She offered 
her a drink of the lemonade. 

Horror of horrors ! 

“I don’t want the lemonade.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because it’s dirty.” 

Wailing wall of Jerusalem ! Whatever possessed the 


124 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


child to say so! Her answer brought down upon her 
head a deluge of abuse. She received it in silence. 

The next day Riva noted that Minnie omitted lemon- 
ade from her verbal advertisement of the refreshments. 
“Doesn’t it suit you to call lemonade too ?” she demanded 
angrily. 

“It’s dirty.” 

“What's dirty?” 

“You stucked your hand in it.” 

From the slops of the East Side comes this impudent 
T)rat to tell Riva that her hand is dirty! The Alliance 
was overcome with fury. The following day Minnie was 
shipped home, Morris putting her on the car and instruct- 
ing the conductor where to let her off. 

“It’s nearly the end of the season anyway,” Riva said 
to Morris, rejoicing in the secret recesses of her heart 
that she would save the money for the shoes and the 
dress. 


XXIV 

Elias awoke very ill the night following Mr. Ratkin’s 
death. Sarah felt his temples and concluded his was a 
case of “hot head,” which is the manifestation of illness 
to our tenement friends and the forerunner of the 
worst evil. Sarah grew excited. He must have a doctor, 
was her firm decision, and she would summon one the 
very first thing in the morning. A crisp two-dollar 
bill was in her possession, more than enough in those 
days when a physician demanded fifty cents a visit. 

Mira dropped in at seven o’clock the next morning 
to ask if Sarah cared to go with her to a store on Hester 
Street where cracked eggs were to be had for “next to 


ELIAS 


125 


nothing.” Sarah told her of Elias's condition. Indeed, 
he must have a doctor was also her verdict ; and she went 
right down and brought back a Doctor Levin, who had 
saved the life of one of her neighbor's children when an- 
other physician had given the case up as hopeless. 

Elias could not be cured of his lung trouble, said Doc- 
tor Levin, unless he went to the country for six months. 

Elias sick with lung trouble! Sarah, Minnie, Ida, 
Bubbele, Jacob stood awestruck. This that they had 
heard could not possibly be ! 

But Mira had her own opinion in the matter. “The 
country is a hospital maybe ?” she asked, measuring Doc- 
tor Levin with a look. 

“Yes, a hospital in the country.” 

Did not Doctor Levin see that Elias was a father of 
children; that his presence on earth was necessary, and 
for purposes of “practicing” the hospital could find it- 
self another man? Mira pursed her lips defiantly; her 
red knob of hair quivered. 

The wise East Sider, convinced that a hospital is an 
establishment which snatches up the bodies of the poor 
to practice upon, will no more agree to send a patient 
there than he will agree to have him buried alive. Lack- 
ing Sarah’s, or Itzick Kramer’s, or Schmuel Rothen- 
berg’s experience with the Peoples Charities, physicians 
have failed to discover how these people come by their 
belief. 

Doctor Levin, a young man new in his profession, dis- 
posed of Mira with one contemptous look; then pleaded 
with Elias to believe that nothing but a long rest in the 
country would save him, and advised him to go just as 
soon as arrangements could be made for his admission. 

Sarah and Elias were impressed by Doctor Levin's 


126 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


evident sincerity. Sarah, accompanying him to the door 
followed by Minnie, thanked him, and asked distractedly, 
as if speaking to herself : 

“Woe is me, how does an otherwise perfectly healthy 
and strong man become so sick all of a sudden?” 

Doctor Levin flashed round upon her in youthful 
amazement. 

“How? By living against all the laws of nature.” 

His words, solemn and ominous, remained with Min- 
nie the rest of her life. 

For a few days Sarah found herself with scarcely a 
moment in which to give any particular thought to Elias, 
who as it happened felt somewhat better. She cooked 
for Mrs. Ratkin, washed for her, cleaned her home, fed 
her children and provided consolation. The janitress 
was sadly broken down; she could not pull herself to- 
gether. The tenants had even to take over her janitor’s 
work. Of all the neighbors Sarah did the most. She 
had an ailing husband — “of course, Elias would not dw 

from his sickness, but ” And nothing so softens us 

toward our fellows as to see them visited by a catas- 
trophe that may befall us, too. 

A week later a brother of Mrs. Ratkin turned up, and 
the family moved away. 


XXV 

After the Ratkins’ departure Minnie was left much to 
herself. She was lonely; she missed Abie. And she 
missed Foxy, who had gone on his transmigratory way. 
Poor Foxy! At his wits’ end for something to eat he 
had gorged upon some refuse in a neighboring air-shaft 
and the next day departed this life. 


ELIAS 


12 7 


One afternoon Minnie tried to forget her loneliness in 
a game of school with a dozen pieces of coal for pupils 
set in a row on the lounge against the wall. Withdraw- 
ing a foot or two and using a stick as a ruler she pointed 
to the first pupil. 

“Spell cat,” she ordered. No answer. “Spell cat.” 
Still no answer. A stupid pupil ! She passed on to the 
next. The first piece of coal fell over. The teacher 
raised the pupil and told her to behave; as she turned 
to the next pupil the first fell over again. The teacher 
frowned and compressed her lips in exact imitation of 
her own teacher. Placing one hand on her hip and rais- 
ing the ruler, she dealt the naughty pupil a sharp rap. 
Something impertinent came in reply. The teacher 
looked at the pupil and repeated in Doctor Levin's very 
tone of amazement: “How? By living against all the 
laws of nature!” She waited as if to give' time for the 
idea to sink in, then repeated : “By living against all the 
laws of nature!” 

Sarah entered with the purchases for the evening meal. 
Coal on the lounge! Didn’t Minnie know that coal 
spoiled a lounge. There now, never mind, Minnie 
should begin at once to prepare supper; she herself had 
to go right out again to Mira. 

Sarah’s object in hurrying to Mira was to obtain that 
sage’s sanction for Elias to go to the hospital. Elias, 
who had got much worse, had consulted Doctor Levin 
again and was now waiting to be sent to the country: 
indeed, he was eager to go. A heavy cloud hung over 
Sarah. Mira’s denunciation of the country rang an ill 
omen in her heart. Mira knew so much about every- 
thing. What if Elias would get still worse in the coun- 
try? But perhaps if the sage were told of how eager 


128 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Elias was to go, she would approve. Sarah would also 
tell her of a cheap room she had found in a basement 
on Madison Street — one room would be enough for them 
if Elias were away ; of her plans for doing a little extra’ 
work — peddling perhaps; and of a job Minnie had se- 
cured — taking care of the butcher’s twins at five cents 
an afternoon. They could struggle through six months. 
If only Elias would get better! 

Mira, however, was not to be shaken from her opinion 
of “countries a hospital was a hospital, country or no 
country, and a hospital was a slaughterhouse. 

On the way back home, Sarah tremblingly decided to 
talk the matter over again with Elias. If Mira held to 
her conviction so unwaveringly, maybe — maybe there 
was more to it than they understood. She sighed once, 
twice, thrice — no strict account can be kept of sighs 
in Sarah Mendel’s world. 

Scarcely had she reached home when Doctor Levin 
came bringing the notice of Elias’s admission to the sani- 
tarium and before she had a chance to voice her fears 
Elias himself entered and seemed so glad that she had 
not the heart to discourage him with Mira’s ideas. 
Sarah, he said, would see, mer su Shem (God willing), 
he would come back better than he had ever been. 

The following Tuesday Elias went away. 

A week later Sarah was notified that Elias was very 
ill, and she must come at once. Pneumonia had devel- 
oped from a severe cold. 

Sarah could have tom the flesh from her body as at 
Elias’s bedside in the sanitarium she watched his labored 
breathing and noted the fearfully emaciated face with 
a red patch on each sunken cheek ; his fevered tossing, 
the heaving of his flat chest ; the gaze of his eyes as he 


ELIAS 


129 


opened them and looked unknowingly at her. Mira had 
been right. They must have been “practicing” upon him. 
She followed each movement of the doctor and nurse 
like a spy; she strained every nerve to understand what 
they were saying. When Elias moaned as they movecf 
him, she could have shrieked. 

Mira, as soon as she heard that Sarah had been sum- 
moned, went to the hospital out of an impulse com- 
pounded of curiosity, a desire to help, a desire to console, 
and eagerness to get in her “I told you so.” 

Sarah shrank and cowered when Mira appeared. 
From the narrowed keen little blue eyes and compressed 
thin lips, she read the opinion to which Mira would hold 
forever: “Sarah was to blame. No sensible woman 
would have let her husband go to a country. Country, 
schmuntry! A hospital, that’s what it was.” However, 
Sarah’s look of misery restrained Mira’s tongue and 
turned her intended taunt into words of consolation: 
Sarah should hope for the best. 

“Woe is me!” Sarah cried, “if only he comes back 
alive, I will be content with bread and water the rest of 
my life.” 

Mira had come to the hospital not merely to stand 
around ; she had come to be of use, so that when 
the physician was about to administer a hypodermic, she 
told him to substitute a glass of whisky. Sarah, con- 
vinced by Mira’s confident manner that the glass of 
whisky was the one thing that would save Elias, eagerly 
seconded the request. The doctor, anxious to do his best 
for Eiias, tried to explain that the hypodermic and not 
whisky was what Elias needed. But Mira, only the 
more emboldened by his indulgent tone, let out a torrent 
of abuse. The physician, in his impotence to convince 


130 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


these two ignorant women, ordered them roughly to 
mind their own business — indisputable proof that the un- 
fortunate Elias was being practiced upon, slaughtered. 
Sarah and Mira turned ashen. 

In the chill hours of the dawn Sarah sat swaying to 
and fro, clutching at her hair in an agony of grief. She 
was a murderess, a murderess, a murderess, she told her- 
self over and over. 

Elias had passed away that night. 


PART II 
THE CELLAR 












PART II 


THE CELLAR 


Chayim Schlopoborsky kept a shoe repair shop in a 
cellar on Madison Street. In the rear was a room in- 
tended, according to the architectural plans, for the living 
room. As Chayim Schlopoborsky was obliged to live 
with the greatest economy, it occurred to him one night, 
as he fought for sleep against the noise of the passing 
street cars, that he might move his lounge, table, chair 
and stove from the back room to the shop, partition 
part of the shop off with a curtain, and live and work* 
in the shop. The rear room he could then rent out. 
Such a room he felt ought to bring him five dollars a 
month. The following day he made his inspiration 
known to the Swedish janitor, who, lame in the use of 
the Yiddish language, had difficulty in understanding. 
However, once he did understand, he smiled approv- 
ingly ; it was a brilliant idea ; ‘‘Smart !” he cried, pointing 
to his forehead and went off for a room-to-let sign for 
Chayim Schlopoborsky to display in his window. 

A few days after Elias had gone to the sanitarium, 
Sarah, carrying out their plan for greater economy, 
moved with her four children into Chayim Schlopo- 
borsky’s cellar. 

♦ * * * * * * 

Chayim Schlopoborsky, with a heart not altogether of 
stone, had sympathy for Sarah in her bereavement and 
pitied the orphaned children. However, after the first 
133 


134 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


flush of sympathy wore off and the loud talking and 
wailing in Sarah’s quarters annoyed his customers, he 
was obliged to remonstrate. Thereafter, Sarah wept 
more softly and so did the children. Relatives and 
friends, too, were restricted to modulated lamentations. 
“The man next door from whom we have this room 
rented is a bad one,” Sarah would say with a warning 
finger to her lips. 

******* 

In her stupefaction after Elias’s death, Sarah lost all 
concern for the future. She gave up her work of char- 
ring and her new business of peddling candles on Friday 
mornings, and even neglected her housework. While 
Mira busied herself for the home and the children, she 
sat idle, wringing her hands, crying lamentations, be- 
moaning Elias’s fate and the fate of her children. 

A full month passed and Sarah still suffered herself 
to be supported by relatives, who began to think she 
was a little foo indifferent about her dependence. A 
week later some began to whisper that she was being 
“spoiled” then that she had “chuzpeh” (cheek). Finally 
there was only one left who still had faith in her. “She 
is stunned. When she comes to herself, we shall be able 
to reason with her,” he declared. Four weeks more 
passed, yet Sarah gave no sign of waking up to the hard- 
ship that her dependence imposed upon her relatives. 
“As if,” they said boldly now, “she does not know that 
for us to give fifty cents, one dollar, two dollars, is like 
tearing off our skin for her.” A little later they cried' 
indignantly : “Let her go to the Charities if she can’t do 
for herself — but let her have mercy on us! We are poor 
too.” 

“We cannot propose it,” the one of faith said, “she is 


THE CELLAR 


135 


no beggar from home. When she comes to herself she 
will see our hardship and will go to the Charities of 
her own accord.’! 

One more week, then the relatives unanimously de- 
cided to see to it that Sarah was roused. Mira was 
delegated to do the rousing. 

Sarah had forgiven, but she had never forgotten 
Mira’s superior attitude on their pilgrimage together to 
the Charities, so that now when Mira mentioned going 
to the Charities for monetary aid, she turned upon her 
with a storm of abuse. Poor, mistaken Sarah ! She saw 
in Mira a conspirator with Fate. 

“She all but threw me out of her house,” said Mira 
to each of the relatives. “When I told her it was no 
plan to sit round and let others — poor, too, even if they 
are blood ties — support her, she nearly ate me up alive.” 
To the one staunch relative she added caustically : “For 
that she is enough herself. For that she is not so stun- 
ned. I did not say that she should go to work. I know 
she is not enough herself for that ; but to go to the Char- 
ities — she can do that !” 

The relatives decided to withdraw their support. Only 
two dollars from the one faithful relative came to Sarah 
the next week. 


XXVII 

It was a bitter cold Saturday morning. Sarah sat 
with her children huddled about a tiny coal stove, in 
which a few pieces of wood were burning low. In the 
home there was not a scrap of food. 

“Uh, mama, I’m hungry,” wailed each of the three 
younger children. 


136 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Sarah’s glassy eyes filled with alarm. But when the 
cry was repeated, her alarm put up the shield of anger, 
and she reprimanded them, at first gently, then more 
harshly. 

“I will go get something to eat right away. Mean- 
time be still. It is not so terrible that you should be 
without food once.” Sarah knew not what she was 
saying. 

A long glassy stare, then a look of dawning resolution. 
It was Saturday ; Miss Liebman would be at home. She 
would go and ask to do the girls’ cleaning that day in- 
stead of Sunday and explain her absence of the past 
weeks. If the pain in her side would only let up! To 
test herself she rose from her chair and crossed the 
room. At the other end she sank into a chair, so sharp 
and intense was the pain. 

“Ma — ma, I’m hungry.” This time it was Jacob, who 
until then had not complained. A tear quaked on each 
lid, the corners of his mouth were drawn, and he 
scratched his head helplessly. 

The girls glanced furtively from Jacob to their mother. 
Sarah with the look of a terror-stricken animal rose 
swiftly, regardless of the pain in her side. 

“Go,” she cried to Minnie, “go in the back way of the 
old groceryman on Henry Street and ask him to give 
you bread and a herring. Tell him your papa died and 
your mama has no money.” Though the store was closed’ 
on Saturday, the grocer occasionally transacted business 
through the back entrance. 

Minnie rose simultaneously with the command, so com- 
pelling was Sarah’s demeanor. 

“You go along,” Sarah said to Jacob, who never be- 


THE CELLAR 


137 

fore obeyed a command so instantly. There was some- 
thing startling in Sarah's look. 

The other children huddled closer to the stove. Sarah 
sat with drooping shoulders, irresolutely twining and un- 
twining her fingers, a picture of abject despair. “Woe 
is me, what has been the matter with me that I let 
it come to this ? I could have worked. Woe is me !" she 
thought over and over again. 

The relatives had succeeded in rousing Sarah ! 

******* 

Chayim Schlopoborsky opened the Mendels' door with- 
out the ceremony of knocking. 

“Mrs. Mendel, you are really a respectable woman and 
you have your great troubles, but I am a poor man too. 
I must have my five dollars’ rent. I have been waiting 
already over a week." 

Chayim Schlopoborsky did, indeed, have his own troub- 
les. Six months previously he had gone through the 
horrors of a pogrom, in which he had lost one child and 
both his parents. The height of his ambition was to 
bring over his family of wife and six children; in the 
little Russian town they waited eagerly for his summons 
to the Land of Freedom. 

While the miserable Mendels hugged their feeble little 
stove in the back room, Chayim Schlopoborsky sat on 
his stool in the front shop cogitating: 

“Mir is als bashert! (everything must happen to me!) 
Nu, if she has no money to pay the rent, let her go 
to the Charities. I am not rich enough to keep her for 
nothing. I have my own troubles." 

To do Chayim Schlopoborsky justice, he was ignorant 
of the exact state of affairs in the Mendel home. What 


1 38 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

he did know exactly was that he was five dollars short 
of the passage money for his wife and babies. 

Sarah looked at the shoemaker dumfounded. She 
was about to explain that in a few days she would get 
money for work and would pay him, but Chayim mis- 
took the expression on her face for an appeal. 

“I am poor too,” he said, “if you have no money, go 
to the Charities. Rich people give money there. I can- 
not afford to be a philanthropist.” 

Sarah, the look of a hunted beast leaping into her 
eyes, jumped from her chair. In a burst of impotent 
rage she grabbed up one of the children’s school books 
and hurled it at the shoemaker. It struck him on the 
head. She followed it with another book, then with a 
knife and then with a fork. The man shrieked. People 
passing on the street, stopped to listen. The Swedish 
janitor ran in just in time to tear another implement 
from the violent Sarah’s hand. 

“A regular devil she is !” Chayim Schlopoborsky 
shouted, making for the door and slamming it shut be- 
hind him. 


XXVIII 

The sky hung gray over the metropolis ; heavy 
clouds drifted cumbersomely in layers across the melan- 
choly expanse. It began to drizzle. 

A husky expressman, humming a lively air from a 
Yiddish operetta, carried the Mendel belongings from 
their basement shelter to the sidewalk. The last piece 
deposited, he removed a plate from the inside of the 
coal stove, in which he had placed all the dishes, set it 
on top of the stove, and laid a ten-cent piece on its 


THE CELLAR 


139 


yellowish, cracked surface. Then he looked down into 
the basement. None of the Mendels were to be seen. 
Wiping the perspiration from his large, red face, he 
slapped on his cap, thrust his hands into his pockets, 
and sauntered off, keeping step to the tune of the Yid- 
dish operetta. 

The rain came down on the Mendel belongings. 

After a time Sarah, as if stealthily, emerged from the 
basement. She was dry-eyed, with the haunted expres- 
sion that had settled upon her face. The three girls, cry- 
ing, followed. 

The street was deserted. The children looked up at 
Sarah. Her eyelids fluttered. She glanced at the fur- 
niture and wrung her hands, then turned away. 

“Go, children/’ she said in a hard voice, “stand inside 
the vestibule so you do not get drenched.” The children 
made no move. “Go, children, wait there until I come 
back. I am going away.” 

“Where you gone, mama?” Minnie asked in terror. 

Sarah in her trials had often threatened to throw her- 
self into the river. 

“I am going to the Charity place to see the Lady.” 

“Don’ go, don’ go, mama!” the child cried, certain 
her mother intended to do something desperate. 

“Go up on the stoop, you hear?” Sarah raised her 
voice. 

“Lemme go along wid you,” Minnie pleaded, rubbing 
her tears away with the back of her little hand. 

Sarah threw her a commanding look. Minnie led the 
children up the stoop into the vestibule. Sarah drew 
her shawl close about her rigid body and walked down 
the street. 

On the Saturday of the attack on Chayim Schlopobor- 


140 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

sky, immediately after Minnie and Jacob had returned 
from the grocer, Sarah in spite of her pain had set out 
to call on Miss Liebman. Repeated ringing of the door- 
bell had brought no response. From the janitor she 
learned that the girls had moved away, where he did 
not know. So she decided to go to the Charities to see 
her. But the next few days the pain in her side was 
so intense that she went instead to Mrs. Finkelstein, who 
lived nearer, only to hear from the maid that the lady 
was taking a six weeks’ rest at a winter resort. 

What Sarah in her desperation might have attempted 
had not the sympathetic relative called that same eve- 
ning and left her five dollars, is hard to say. She im- 
mediately offered the shoemaker three dollars. He re- 
fused to accept it. He had vowed “that regular devil” 
sfiould be thrown out. As the janitor more than 
agreed with him that Sarah was not one devil but one 
and a half devils, and the landlord was an open-minded 
man, Sarah was served with a dispossess notice the sig- 
nificance of which she failed to realize and so was wholly 
unprepared for the eviction that followed close after. 

When she reached the Charities building it was nearly 
five o’clock. Somehow she could not muster the cour- 
age to go in ; she waited on the street for Miss Liebman. 
After half an hour of strained expectancy, with frequent 
eager glances at the door each time it opened, she begged 
a boy to go in and ask Miss Liebman to come out. The 
boy brought back word that Miss Liebman no longer 
worked there and that there was no one then in the office 
who knew her whereabouts. 

It is in such moments as these that we throw up our 
hands and run either to or from God. Sarah looked up 
to the heavens and denied God. 


THE CELLAR 


141 

She stood stark. Then she faced about and walked 
homeward, slowly,' with bowed head. 

On the sidewalk in front of her whilom home she 
found Jacob standing by the furniture looking mystified. 
As he had gone straight from school to hawking news- 
papers, the eviction was a surprise to him. 

“What's a madder, mama?” he asked, but received no 
reply, as Sarah who had glanced into the vestibule, 
missed the children. They were not where she had left 
them. At that moment the vestibule door flung open 
and Minnie came running out. 

“Uh, ma,” she cried happily, “Mrs. Block upstairs 
made us come up by her house.” 

Though Sarah swiftly gathered that a neighbor had 
offered hospitality, she stared idiotically. 

“Mama, she said I should make you come up, 
too.” 

“Go upstairs,” said Sarah, addressing both Jacob and 
Minnie. 

“You come too,” pleaded Minnie. 

“Go — go alone ” Sarah pushed Minnie gently 

backward. A great lump was in her throat. She felt her 
self-control slipping away. 

“You come, too.” 

“Go !” Sarah shouted, and turned her eyes to the fur- 
niture. 

A passing man noticed the group and the furniture; 
he stopped, mumbled something, and deposited a coin on 
the collection plate. 

“Do you hear me? Go, you bloodsuckers!” yelled 
Sarah, bereft of her reason. 

The two children turned upon their heels. 

Sarah clutched at her heart with her cold, moist hand. 


142 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


She looked up at the heavens, then down at the base- 
ment, and she vowed vengeance upon — CHAYIM 
SCHLOPOBORSKY. 

XXIX 

The children had waited patiently in the vestibule, 
watching the drizzle turn into a downpour. Two people 
passed and left coins in the collection plate; another 
walked by rapidly, apparently too bent upon his own af- 
fairs to answer the call of another’s need. 

Presently the vestibule door opened. An elderly 
woman emerging brushed past the children and de- 
scended the stoop. 

“Oigh wei!” Mrs. Block cried from the bottom step; 
looking back at the children: “Is this your furniture ?” 

“Yeh,” Minnie stuck her thumb in her mouth. 

Mrs. Block was all excited pity. “Where is your 
mama? Woe is me!” she cried, wringing her hands 
and running back up the steps. 

“She wen’ away,” Minnie said. Ida and Bubbele be- 
gan to cry. They were cold and sleepy. 

“Mein Gott! Mein Gott! Do not stand here.” The 

woman pushed them into the hall. “Come upstairs with 

. . . - 
me. 

Taken so suddenly, the children did not resist, though 
Minnie had her qualms about Sarah and Jacob. 

“Mother mine, mother mine!” the woman muttered 
when she had got the children in her home and bustled 
about, drying them, brushing their hair, kissing and pet- 
ting them. 

It was while they were being regaled with bread and 
cocoa that Minnie ventured to say: 


THE CELLAR 


143 

“My mama might be downstairs and my brother 
maybe earned too. I wanna go down and see.” 

“Yes, bring them both up,” Mrs. Block repeated three 
times. 

When Minnie returned bringing Jacob but not Sarah 
and told their hostess that her mother refused to come, 
Mrs. Block picked up her shawl and said she would go 
down herself. 

“Uh, I'm so glad! She’ll come if you go,” cried 
Minnie. 

When the door closed upon the hostess, Jacob growled : 

“Chatterbox! Makes me sick! Always she got to go 
and say !” 

Jacob’s harshness at this particular time was 
unbearable. 

“Shut up!” cried Minnie. “You don’t care, yell, if 
mama stays out the whole night in the rain or not.” 
Though Minnie had explained to him on the stairs that 
they had been “knocked out cause mama didn’t pay the 
rent,” it had not occurred to Jacob that the horrid busi- 
ness would last through the night. He was struck to the 
heart. To evade Minnie, he turned to spin a top for 
Bubbele, a toy Mrs. Block had taken away from a boy 
in the street to punish him for having struck her foot 
with it. 

Sarah was in the vestibule weeping when Mrs. Block 
appeared. 

“By standing here and crying you are not helping your 
children. Do not forget you are a mother of chil- 
dren.” 

A man stopped and deposited a penny in the 
plate. 

Sarah’s body quivered from head to foot as from a 


144 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


chill. She followed Mrs. Block into the hall and up the 
dark stairs. 


XXX 

Mrs. Block did everything to cheer Sarah and put 
her at her ease. She seated her on the most comfortable 
chair, removed her shawl, placed Bubbele on her lap, 
talked, laughed, bustled. “And now,” she said finally to 
the children, “say what you want for supper — salmon, 
cheese or herring or sardines?” For all her coaxing, 
they remained non-committal. She went down and 
brought back salmon and cheese and herring and sar- 
dines, as well as horse-radish and sponge cake for her 
husband. 

Mr. Block was a gentle, kind-looking man, whose slow 
manner distantly recalled Elias. He greeted his unex- 
pected guests with friendliness, immediately suspecting 
their relation to the furniture on the street. 

Supper, served on a regular even if coarse set of 
dishes, was a silent meal. The hosts were occupied with 
conjectures and plans for their guests, while Sarah, in 
her misery, battled against rising tears. When the chil- 
dren ventured to whisper, she hushed them up. 

After supper, Mr. Block played with Bubbele on his 
knee, and the other children gathered round him, laugh- 
ing at the way he danced the child up and down. For 
a while it seemed as if there were peace in the hearts of’ 
all. 

“How would it have hurt us to have had a dozen 
such?” Mr. Block asked his wife. 

Mrs. Block, who was childless, smiled as she met 
Sarah’s eyes. 


THE CELLAR 


145 


“Their father lives?” Mr. Block asked Sarah. 

Ere the evening was over the Blocks learned a goodly 
portion of the Mendel history. But Sarah kept secret 
the story of the disciplining relatives and Chayim 
Schlopoborsky’s iteration of their advice. 

“When a woman finds herself in your position in this 
country,” said Mr. Block weightily, “there is no reason, 
nevertheless, why she should go under. There are char- 
ity places. If you do not want to apply yourself, some- 
one else can do it for you. It is not so terrible even 
if it is bad ; the years will fly, the children will grow up, 
they will go to work. It is not so terrible.” His expres- 
sion belied his words. Sarah gulped, dropped her eyes 
and said nothing. 

Mrs. Block, whose sympathetic heart was torn by 
Sarah’s evident wretchedness, proposed they get ready 
for bed. Bubbele yawned and rubbed her sleepy eyes. 
The rain pelted dismally against the window. 

“Itzick,” Mrs. Block said, “this rain is enough to 
drown the furniture. What do you say to going down 
and putting a sheet over it?” 

Mr. Block took the torn sheet and went down. Re- 
turning he energetically set to work to maneuver sleep- 
ing space for their guests. 

Soon everyone was in bed and the home dark. The 
rain came down witE still greater force. Hailstones rat- 
tled against the panes, and it began most unseasonably 
to thunder and lighten. 

“Nebich !” Mr. Block whispered to his wife, who wiped 
her eyes and sighed. 

“To-morrow, the first thing in the morning,” she said, 
“I will help her look for one or two rooms, and on your 
way to work you better leave a letter at the Charities 


1 46 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

asking them to come. Herself she will not go. I could 
see it in her eyes. We will ourselves lay out the few 
dollars for the moving and the rent deposit and for a 
little for them to eat.” 

“Yes, I will do like I did for the man in my shop — 
leave a letter ; they attend to it just as well.” 

At a vivid flash of lightning, Mr. Block left his bed 
and fastened dark shawls over the lower halves of the 
windows. Passing his little guests he whispered to them 
to “sleep” and playfully pinched Minnie’s nose telling her 
that her gray eyes shone like diamonds in the dark. The 
children, to Sarah’s annoyance laughed. 

***** * * 

Before the others awoke the next morning, Mr. Block, 
using the wooden seat of a chair as a desk, indited a 
letter in the Yiddish to the Peoples Charities. He 
wrote dramatically of the condition of the widow Sarah 
and her four children, penniless, with the sidewalks of 
New York as their only home. “Out of pity and as a 
service to God,” he concluded, “my wife and I took them 
in for the night.” 

On his way to work he delivered the note. 

While Mrs. Block was putting the bedroom in order, 
Sarah snatched the opportunity to admonish the children. 

“Be careful of everything. Don’t touch anything. 
Don’t break anything. Remember this is the home of 
strangers. . . . Minnie, and you, too, Jacob, don’t come 
back for dinner at twelve o’clock; it will be too much 
trouble for Mrs. Block.” Minnie and Jacob looked 
gloomy at the prospect of a fast. “Nu, don’t carry on,” 
Sarah warned them. “It won’t hurt you to do without 
dinner.” Sarah looked so pale and her upper lip 
twitched so that the children suffered at the sight of her. 


THE CELLAR 


H7 

Minnie moved intending to caress her mother. Sarah 
held her off. “You go to the butcher’s children right 
after school; the five cents will come in handy.” To 
Jacob: “You come home; don’t waste a minute after 
school ; if I find rooms, you will have to help me carry the 
furniture.” At last they had permission to leave for 
school. 

“Do you think we should take the children along when 
we look for rooms?” Mrs. Block, emerging from the 
bedroom, asked Sarah. 

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. She looked so tired 
and worn that Mrs. Block thought she had better not be 
encumbered with the babies. “Let them stay at home 
quietly and play and we will make greater speed.” 

Sarah put the children down in the middle of the 
room, again admonishing them not to touch a single 
thing. 

“I have no diamonds and pearls in my house,” said 
Mrs. Block. “Let them play with everything if it amuses 
them.” 

In the dark hall Sarah chose the darkest spot to ask 
Mrs. Block: 

“Do you think they will accept a one-dollar deposit if 
we find a room or two?” 

Poor Sarah! One dollar was all she had, and she 
feared to go on a useless expedition. 

Mrs. Block, certain of reimbursement by the Charities, 
said : 

“My dear Mrs. Mendel, don’t be a child. Whether 
five dollars is with me or you, what does it matter? 

I will lay it out for you, and when God will grant you 
better times, you will give it back to me.” In her heart 
she thought: “God, what a pig a person is compelled 


143 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

to be! If I were not sure that the Charities would 
give it back to me, I simply could not afford to offer it 
to her.” 

Sarah, blinded by tears, stumbled down the dark stairs. 
On the street she turned livid at the sight of the furni- 
ture. Mrs. Block hurried her away. 

For three hours the women hunted. They scrambled 
up rickety stairs and down into basements. Not a single 
place was to be had for five dollars a month. 

Nearly noon time, disheartened and tired, they faced 
each other helplessly on the street. The rings under 
Sarah’s eyes were black; her face was drawn and sal- 
low. She held her hand to her right side. Mrs. Block 
decided to stop house-hunting. 

‘‘If worse comes to worse,” she said as they entered 
her rooms, “y° u and the children can stay with us an- 
other night.” 

Mrs. Block compelled Sarah to lie down on the lounge. 
Wearily Sarah turned her head toward the wall and 
closed her eyes. 

“Ssh !” Mrs. Block whispered to the children still play- 
ing on the floor. 

Sarah sat up. 

“Be quiet!” she commanded harshly, “don’t disturb 
Mrs. Block.” 

“No, no,” Mrs. Block cried, “I was thinking only of 
you. They do not disturb me a bit.” She was alarmed 
by Sarah’s wild appearance. “Go to sleep, see, do me a 
favor,” she begged, and forced her guest down on the 
lounge. She feared for Sarah’s reason. 

Sarah lay down again. The children were still as 
mice. 

Elias was reading aloud from the newspaper — Jacob 


THE CELLAR 


149 


was studying his lessons, his geography on his lap and ink 
on the floor. The teakettle sang on the stove — Minnie 
was sweeping the fine, large room-of-all-affairs of Henry 
Street. Mrs. Ratkin was saying to her how nice and 
companionable her Abie and Minnie were 

Sarah was startled from her dreams by the creaking 
of the floor as Mrs. Block moved across the room. She 
sat bolt-upright, her hair disheveled, her eyes staring. 
She could not remember after her fifteen minutes’ doze, 
where she was, then she cried in extreme distress: “It 
must be terribly late. I must go at once to look for 
rooms.” 

“Nu, nu, don’t be excited,” the good Mrs. Block beg- 
ged. “You will eat dinner first and the children will 
come right away for dinner from school. After that 
there will be time enough to look for rooms.” 

Sarah protested, rising and arranging her hair. “The 
children are not coming from school anyway,” she said, 
“I told them not to. Bubbele and Ida will have enough 
with a piece of bread. I do not want anything.” 

Mrs. Block changed color. 

“Fui ! fui !” she cried, “to let your own children rather 
do without food than trouble a strange woman a little' 
bit ! With a real mother’s heart you could not do that !” 
Mrs. Block really meant to shame Sarah. “A mother 
should rather trouble a whole world than sacrifice the 
tip of her child’s pinky ” 

A rap at the door interrupted the sermon. Sarah’s 
mind was in a whirl — dinner, pinky, sacrifice, Elias, the 
teakettle 

The Charities investigator was admitted. When the 
young woman made known her mission Sarah seemed 
to turn into marble; she stood rigid, ashen white, be- 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


150 

wildered. Mrs. Block was terrified into an immediate 
admission of what her husband had done. 

“With a real mother’s heart” rang in Sarah’s brain, 
“a woman should trouble a whole world rather than 

sacrifice the tip of her child’s pinky ” Something 

snapped in her being: her hold on herself gave way. 
She dropped on the lounge and delivered herself up to 
the mercy of the investigator. 

Bubbele and Ida came to lean against their mother 
and to scrutinize the visitor. And the investigator, whose 
privilege it is to disregard the sacredness of privacy, 
probed into every nook and cranny of Sarah’s existence. 
While waiting for answers she now and then took notice 
of the children. 

“You’re a pretty little girl but your hands are very 
dirty,” she said to Bubbele. 

Bubbele looked hard at her baby fingers. 

“Water is very cheap.” 

Bubbele and Ida looked up at their mother as if to 
see whether she felt the same way about it. 

Bubbele’s hands were dirty ; she had been playing sev- 
eral hours on the floor. Sarah, who wanted to say so, 
merely squirmed on the lounge. 

“Have you any relatives?” 

“Yes, a few on my husband’s side.” 

“Give me their names and addresses.” 

Sarah gave them. 

“En — en Tante Mira ” piped Bubbele. 

Sarah smiled down upon the baby and patted her 
cheek to silence her. She felt self-conscious and timid' 
and mortified. 

“Who is Tante Mira?” The investigator was on the 
alert. 


THE CELLAR 


151 

“She is no relative ; only a compatriot.” 

She would make sure of that herself. She asked for 
Mira’s address. Sarah gave it with black misgivings in 
her heart. She could have shaken Bubbele. 

“How comes it your relatives permitted you to be 
evicted ?” 

The investigator laid a rude hand upon a bruised heart. 

Sarah’s lips quivered, her eyes reddened and smarted. 
What explanation could she make ? How, indeed, was it 
that the relatives had permitted the calamity ? She could 
not say. 

The investigator shrewdly decided that here was a 
matter requiring a detective’s skill and she would have to 
exercise her ingenuity to ferret out what was at the 
bottom of Sarah’s silence on this point. 

“I think,” she said finishing her writing, “you had 
better come with me now, and we will find rooms.” 

Sarah gave Mrs. Block a look which said : “We hunted, 
did we not ? My side hurts.” Mrs. Block’s look in return 
said : “It is lunch time ; we ought to have a little to eat.” 
But neither demurred. 

Sarah rose, put on her shawl and stood ready to go. 
Ida and Bubbele followed her to the door. She pushed 
them aside impatiently. 

They found two rooms on the fifth floor of a Rutgers' 
Street tenement, at seven dollars a month. The investi- 
gator, eager to be on her way, handed Sarah five dol- 
lars in the presence of the janitress, saying: 

“I will pay the janitress ; this is for moving and food. 
To-morrow morning at nine o’clock you must come to 
the Charities.” 

Exactly what Sarah had dreaded — that the Lady 
would disgrace her before the janitress. Her heart 


152 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


pounded at her ribs, her knees threatened to give way. 
As she made her way back to Mrs. Block’s home, little 
children looked at her timidly, as if she were crazy, and 
shied away from this woman with the queer staring eyes 

who muttered to herself: “Such a life ! Such dark 

fortune ! Better to be dead — to be dead!” 

XXXI 

Sarah and her fatherless progeny went down on the 
records of the Peoples Charities as Case No. 31100. The 
last two paragraphs of the filing card read : 

“Visited relatives of applicant. Found said rela- 
tives not in want. Said they had helped applicant 
immediately after death of husband, but applicant 
got to expect help and would not help herself. 
Asked how it was they let applicant be evicted. Said 
they did not know of eviction. 

“Would recommend, as applicant seems well and 
strong, that she be given work in the work-room to 
prevent pauperization.” 

Miss Kranz, the investigator, laid this report on the 
desk of the Head of the Department at closing hour. 
The next morning the Head of the Department, who, 
out of devotion to her work, always arrived at the office 
half an hour in advance of the other employees, read 
it and returned it with an O. K. as to the recommenda- 
tion and with the notation : “How about asylum for 
two younger children?” The case thus lay on Miss 
Kranz’s desk pending the arrival of the case in the flesh. 
While Sarah was receiving this absent treatment, she 


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153 


was hurrying and scurrying in her new household. She 
was so nervous that things dropped from her hands and 
her voice rang shrilly as she told the older children leav- 
ing for school that she was going to the Charities and 
would not be at home lunch time. Her fingers trembled 
as she handed Jacob twenty-five cents for the usual in- 
vestment in newspapers. 

Holding Ida and Bubbele, whose hands were as clean 
as could be, Sarah wearily plodded her way to the Char- 
ities. As she approached the place, she was conscious 
of a peculiar, horrifying sensation — a sensation she 
vaguely felt she had experienced on another occasion. 
What was it? She paused in an effort to recall. Elias? 
What had Elias to do with it ? In an instant her memory 
became vividly alive. “I felt when I left there as if 
I had been spilt with pamoonitza. And that is for work. 
How must it be when one comes for money !” So 
she had said to Elias after her first visit to the Charities. 

She shivered convulsively. How was it going to be ! 

She was coming for money ! 

“With a real mother’s heart ” rang in her 

mind Grasping the children’s hands more firmly she 

hastened up the steps. 

A boy ushered her into a large square room in which 
were rows of wooden benches were there already sat 
others in her same plight. She slunk to a rear bench and 
sat down, the children clinging to her skirts. It was early 
and employees straggled in one by one. A formidable 
quiet held the place, broken by an occasional cough, the 
creaking of a bench, a whisper. Sarah’s nightmare sense 
was even more intensified. “God mine am I really I?” 
she asked herself. 

The arrival of Miss Kranz dashed the reality of it all 


i54 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


in her face. Her heart pounded, she perspired, her breath 
came faster, her thoughts more clearly. “I have come 
here for my children’s sake. I will take alms for my chil- 
dren’s sake. I will sacrifice my decency for my children’s 
sake — I will ask them to give me scrubbing and washing 
by ladies. A little I can earn that way ” 

Meanwhile Miss Kranz was running her fingers deftly 
along the edges of a stack of cards to find case No. 
31 ioo. Glancing at the notation on it she beckoned to 
the case in the flesh. 

“Will you let us,” she said when she had Sarah seated 
facing her, “put these two younger children in the orphan 
asylum ?” 

Orphan asylum meant nothing to Sarah, who had never 
heard the expression before; yet her heart leapt to the 
fear of separation from her children. She wiped her 
sweaty face with a trembling hand and asked timidly: 
“What is it, an orphan asylum?” She was told. It was 
like being convinced of the reality of a ghost. This that 
she was listening to could not be — it could not be. 

“You may have a few days to think it over,” sounded 
Miss Kranz’s voice as from another world. “And now 
about you,” the voice went on in a tone of admonition, 
“you will have to do some work — here in the work- 
room.” 

“Yes?” 

Miss Kranz scented surprise in Sarah’s tone. 

“Yes!” she replied with peppery sharpness and a sur- 
vey of Sarah’s body that gauged her working powers. 
“You are certainly well enough to work. A healthy 
woman can’t sit back and fold her hands.” 

Here Miss Kranz was interrupted by another investi- 
gator to have a laugh with her over an applicant who 


THE CELLAR 


155 


insisted that the United States owed him a living — the 
United States was rich enough With a linger- 

ing smile Miss Kranz turned again to Case No. 
31 100. 

‘‘Well, make up your mind about the children first, and 
when I come to see you the day after to-morrow, be 
ready to give me your decision. I would advise you 
to let them go. ,, (Those were not the days when to 
keep the family together was considered “scientific” 
charity.) She paused as if to let her advice sink in. 
“Then I will see about getting work for you here in the 
work-room. Can you sew?” 

Sarah abominated sewing. She said meekly : “I never 
sewed much.” 

Miss Kranz rose hastily. Sarah out of timidity in- 
stantly did the same. Miss Kranz said with impatience. 

“That’s all right, that’s all right. You can learn to 
sew. You have to do some work.” 

Sarah longed to say that she preferred day’s work, 
but the words would not frame themselves. She led the 
children out, her heart crying : “Woe — woe is me !” The 
children talked to her. She hushed them up. Little 
Bubbele could not keep pace with her mother’s hurried 
steps and tugged on Sarah’s skirt. Sarah paid no atten- 
tion until the child threw herself down on the pavement 
and kicked and screamed. 

“My darling !” Sarah raised her from the ground and 
kissed her passionately. “No, no, darling mine, mama 
will walk slower. Woe — woe is me !” 

At home the janitress informed Sarah that a woman 
had called. “A woman” she emphasized — “not a lady,” 
to distinguish the caller from the Charities investigator. 
Sarah dropped her eyes and hurried the children up the 


156 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


stairs. “Who could it have been!” she pondered. In 
the house Sarah threw herself on the lounge while the 
two children made straight for chairs, all of them pant- 
ing from the steep climb. Sarah lay gazing at the blank 
wall, her mind a dizzy jumble of disconnected thoughts 
of the Charities, orphan asylum, the woman caller — who 
she could have been; and she agitated herself over the 
potential gossiping propensities of the new janitress. 
“Woe is me, all the tenants will know we live on charity 
if she is a gossip ” 

The children were so still that Sarah looked up. She 
encountered a pair of troubled little faces with eyes re- 
garding her fixedly. Ida tearfully crying “Ma !” jumped 
up and ran to her mother; Bubbele followed and threw 
her baby body over Sarah’s chest, and wailed, moved by a 
child’s intuition that all was not well with her mama. 

“Don’t cry, darling. Mama is not crying. Did you 
think mama was crying? No, no, darling.” And as if 
to prove that she was as cheerful as she sounded, Sarah 
rose and went about her home duties. “Do you want 
apple and bread for lunch, darling?” she asked Bubbele. 

“Yah!” the child piped as babylike as baby can be. 
Sarah smiled, and Ida implanted a kiss on Bubbele’s 
mouth. 

Sarah looked into the bread box. There was bread 
enough — but there were no apples in the house ! Sighing, 
she resigned herself to the arduous climb again. She 
brought bread as well as apples, for her thoughts had 
been: “Scraps are not enough for growing children 
like Minnie and Jacob. When I was a growing girl my 
mother used to make me eat quantities of sour cream 
and cheese and sweet butter and black bread. My chil- 
dren are to be pitied — my four fatherless babies !” 


THE CELLAR 


157 


Jacob and Minnie bouncing in from school were de- 
lighted to find the family at home, and doubly so when 
they discovered the feast of bread and apples. While her 
little family were munching and chatting, Sarah thought : 

“They are children after all, even Minnie and Jacob. 
How they talk and laugh already! As if everything is 
as before — as if their father were not dead — as if they 
had not been on the street two days ago!” She sighed* 
and shrugged her shoulders in uncomprehending toler- 
ance of the ways of the young. 

Minnie and Jacob were soon of? to school again. Bub- 
bele and Ida lay down to sleep of? the effects of the 
morning’s expedition. Sarah sat by the window and 
thought: “To send the children to an orphan asylum 

must mean to give them away and sign a paper ” 

(Signing a paper to our tenement friends is to commit 
one’s self beyond recall.) “It is like handing them over 
as a gift My children I should give away to stran- 

gers !” A sense of outrage flamed up in her soul. “I will 
not give them away and sign a paper if they will throw 
us ten times out of rooms and I will sooner work my 

fingers to the bone ” She debated with herself as if 

she were her own opponent. . . . Then her thoughts 
drifted to the other aspect of the situation. “But if the 
children will get enough to eat there! It will be better 
for them — they are children and will soon get used to 
being without me. That I will long for them should not 
matter ” 

A light tap on the door roused her. 

Never in her life was Sarah so glad to see anyone as 
she was now to see her friend and enemy, Mira Cohen. 

* * * * * * * 

In her tour of investigation of the Mendel Case, Miss 


158 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Kranz had included Mira Cohen, who, unaware of the 
eviction, had given information based on the old status 
of Sarah’s offensiveness and ingratitude. When she 
learned of the eviction, however, she could, as she told 
her husband in the evening, have bitten her tongue off, 
so provoked was she with herself for having diminished 
Sarah’s chances of obtaining assistance. 

“How should I have known?” she argued to appease 
her conscience as she tossed on her bed in the small hours 
of the night. “She insulted me only because she was so 
desperate. I ought to go to see her. Bygones ought to 
be bygones. They were thrown out on the street! And 
ft was even a rainy day. My God in heaven ! I will go 
to see her the first thing in the morning.” 

However, the dawn found Mira’s conscience less alert, 
and it was not until ten o’clock that her resolution to 
visit Sarah and let bygones be bygones took the form 
of action. Not finding Sarah in, she had applied to the 
janitress to make sure the Charities investigator had 
given her the right address and returned home resolved 
to call again in the afternoon. 

In the melancholy twilight of the room, Mira listened 
in true sympathy as Sarah laid bare her bitter heart. 

* * * * * * * 

“Minnie, go down and buy a postal card and write on 
it what I tell you,” said Sarah in the evening. 

Though tired from a long day of school and nurse- 
work, Minnie made the wearisome journey. 

“What sh’ll I say, ma?” she asked as, breathless, she 
sat down to write. 

Sarah laid a card before the child. “Copy the address 
from here,” she said. 

Minnie, copying, wrote : 


THE CELLAR 


159 

“Peoples Charities, Mustend Street, Case No. 31 100, 
Sarah Mendel.” 

“What sh’ll I tell her?” 

“Tell her,” said Sarah, looking away nervously, “that 
she should please excuse me from signing a paper for 
my fatherless children to give them to the Gerry Society.” 

Sarah spoke in Yiddish ; by labored effort Minnie pro- 
duced a faithful translation in English. But what a 
struggle when she came to “Gerry!” It must be a mis- 
take. She had not been taught the word at school. She 
could not believe the English language guilty of including 
such a meaningless term. Finally she wrote “Gehrer.” 
That done, she looked up at her mother and asked: 

“Ma, who do they wanna take away — them?” she 
pointed to Bubbele and Ida. 

“Yah, ma, usn?” Bubbele asked. 

“No, darling,” said Sarah, gathering the baby in her 
arms, “it is just for fun.” 

The children were satisfied. 

“What’s the Gehrer Society?” asked Minnie. 

Sarah looked quickly away. Her manner grew for- 
bidding. 

What was a Gehrer Society, indeed? A place where 
Jewish orphans were converted to Christianity, where a 
cross was branded on the child’s chest, arm, or back ; 
where a child was whipped mercilessly on the slightest 
provocation, especially the Jewish child. A place that 
did not relinquish the child, once the paper was signed, 
before it attained maturity, if ever the child did attain 
maturity. What! Send her Ida and Bubbele to such a 
place! Visions of the “country” came to Sarah, of 
Mira’s wisdom in identifying it with a slaughterhouse. 
She shuddered. “Not, if to keep them, I must work my 


160 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

fingers to the bone.” Besides, Mira had promised (with 
the simple primitive virtue of her class, real self-sacri- 
fice) that were Sarah to get work for every day, she 
would, and gladly, clean Sarah's home daily, cook, take 
care of the children — and, in short, do for Sarah as she 
would be done by. 


XXXII 

The morning on which Sarah expected Miss Kranz 
she went about her work in a flutter of nervous expecta- 
tion. The morning passed, the lunch hour passed, but no 
investigator appeared. Late in the afternoon, when 
Sarah had decided that Miss Kranz was not coming and 
had donned her working apron intending to polish the 
stove, a rap sounded on the door, followed by Miss 
Kranz’s entrance. Sarah hastily spread both her hands 
flat over her stomach where the apron was most soiled. 
Miss Kranz’s sharp eyes traveled swiftly over her person. 

“How are you, Mrs. Mendel ?” 

Sarah, making no reply, dropped her eyes and flushed. 

“Nice rooms,” remarked Miss Kranz, with a hasty 
survey of the premises. Observing a pot on the stove 
she approached it in a casual manner. Sarah’s hands 
were clammy. She lifted a corner of her apron, partly 
to wipe them and partly to gain time to control the hor- 
rid beating of her heart. The investigator threw a 
hasty glance into the pot ; its melancholy emptiness pro- 
claimed Sarah Not Guilty ! 

“Well, how are you ?” Miss Kranz repeated, and seated 
herself. 

Sarah also seated herself, so conscious of her soiled 
apron that she could not think clearly of anything else. 


THE CELLAR 


161 


“Thanks,” she said. 

It being the privilege of a Charities investigator to in- 
struct the lowly in the ways of proper living, the lady 
remarked, though quite gently: 

“Now, Mrs. Mendel, look at your apron. It is very 
dirty. There is no need for that. Water does not cost 
any money.” She rose, walked over to the sink, and 
turned on the faucet to demonstrate how freely the water 
flowed. 

Sarah, her color mounting rapidly, again placed her 
palms flat over her stomach, and smiled inanely in 
apology. 

“Nobody can be healthy who is not clean,” continued 
Miss Kranz to enlighten the ignorant object of charity. 
Sarah’s left shoulder jerked nervously backward and for- 
ward; she sighed a sigh chopped in two as it left her 
breast. Miss Kranz reseated herself. “Well, have you 
decided about the children?” 

Sarah’s breath came short; her heart-beats seemed to 
thunder in her ears. In fear and trepidation she replied : 

“I want to keep my children. I do not want to send 
them to a Gerry Society.” 

“Gerry Society? Who thinks of sending them to the 
Gerry Society? We want to place them in an orphan 
asylum where there are none but Jewish children. They 
will be better off there than here.” Miss Kranz threw 
a circular, semi-disdainful glance around the room. 

Sarah became panic-stricken. Not a Gerry Society? 
The firm ground of her objection rocked beneath her 
feet. Yet were it ever so much an orphan asylum and 
ever so little a Gerry Society, she did not want to part 
from her children. She bent forward and spoke with 
restrained excitement. 


1 62 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“But I am used to having them at home. I want 
them.” 

“Now, Mrs. Mendel, if you wish our help, you must 
be satisfied to do as we say. We want to do the best 
for you.” 

Sarah twisted her fingers under her apron. 

“I know. But it is very bitter.” Tears came to her 
eyes. 

“Well, think it over a little longer, and I will report 
what you said to-day,” concluded Miss Kranz, rising. 

“I want to work,” Sarah said, also rising. 

Miss Kranz gave her a quick, interested glance. 
“Well, well, coming round,” she thought. In a tone of 
especial kindness she told Sarah to come to the office 
the following morning, and advised her in the meantime 
to consider carefully the matter of the children's future. 
Sarah followed her to the door burning to retort that she 
had already considered it carefully, but Miss Kranz 
turned to face her and she dropped her eyes, and hastily 
promised obedience. 

“Have you much left of the money I gave you?” 

Sarah blinked. “I have enough.” Miss Kranz did not 
require assurance of the truth of the statement. 

When the door closed, Sarah stood dazed; then in a 
few moments she walked automatically into the bedroom 
and looked at her two sleeping babies. “Mein Gott!” 
she moaned, and wrung her hands. Bubbele stirred ; 
Sarah tiptoed out. In an effort at self-control she set 
to polishing the stove, but soon dropped the brush and 
went to the window. One vacant stare out of the win- 
dow, and she stepped over to the sink, removed her 
apron, and put it under the running water. The water 
seeping through the apron came out darkly discolored. 


THE CELLAR 


163 

“It is very dirty,” she thought, flushing scarlet. She 
rubbed soap on, but too nervous to stay at the task 
threw down the soap and went back to the window. 

“God ! they will take the children away. They will 
take them away !” She wrung her hands despairingly. 
She wanted to scream, to dash her head through the 
windowpane. She pressed her hand against her scalp 
which was raw and painful; she was feverishly hot. 
A terrible vague fear shot through her. In her terror she 
threw open the window. “God, my God! I am going 
crazy!” she cried, pressing her palms to her temples. 

Bubbele cried out. The child dreamed that her 
mother spilled a pitcher of cold water over her. Sarah, 
startled, slammed the window shut and rushed to her 
baby, who wailed and clung to her. 

“Yes, my dollele, yes,” Sarah soothed her, stroking her 
warm forehead with her dank hand. Ida, too, awakened, 
and the three moved into the room-of-all-aflfairs. 

All night Sarah tossed restlessly on her bed, rehearsing 
how she would refuse to send her children to the Orphan 
Asylum or Gehrer Society or whatever it was. 

The morning found her ill and unable to go to the 
Charities. In the afternoon she sent Minnie to summon 
the ever-responsive Mira. And Mira, on leaving Sarah, 
deposited a dollar bill (Sarah's cash had run low) under 
a broken plate on the table and consoled her : ' 

“But if you were sick!” 

XXXIII 

It was two days before Sarah was well enough to go 
to the Charities. Anxious to forestall criticism, she 


1 64 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


washed and pressed the children’s dresses, and scrubbed 
and scoured their little bodies; as a result of which she 
arrived late, and went down in Miss Kranz’s opinion 
as one of the habitually dependent, such as the relatives 
had made her out to be. Miss Kranz’s cold recep- 
tion of her only aggravated Sarah’s timidity. With heart 
pounding and breath labored, she seated herself, drawing 
the two children close, and with trembling fingers 
smoothed out a wrinkle from her apron. 

“You must let your husband go to the hospital,” Miss 
Kranz’s voice reached her. “We can do nothing for 
you until you do as we say.” Miss Kranz ushered out 
an applicant who stood with fingers clasped in mute ap- 
peal. Sarah felt as if she must die if Miss Kranz proved 
as relentless about the children and the Gerry Society. 
But, whatever the obstacles, she braced herself to carry 
out her resolution. 

“Well, Mrs. Mendel, so you have come?” Before 
Sarah could grasp the insinuation in the words and offer 
an explanation, Miss Kranz added : “Come upstairs with 
me. 

Sarah rose quickly grasping a child with each hand. 

“No, leave the children down here.” 

Sarah cast a hasty suspicious glance round the room. 
The subtle agony in it was lost on Miss Kranz. 

“Will -they not be in the way ?” 

“No. They may sit on your chair.” 

Seating Bubbele, Sarah stood Ida next to her and whis- 
pered : “Under no circumstances leave her ; and don’t let 
anyone bribe you away from the spot.” If Sarah’s 
wish had taken flight to heaven, all orphan asylums and 
Gerry Societies would have crumbled to dust at that 
moment. 


THE CELLAR 


165 

She followed Miss Kranz through a wide corridor, 
up a spacious stairway, to a door marked “606 — Work- 
room. M It was a long, rather narrow room, in which 
great stacks of clothes piled up around the windows kept 
out the daylight. Miss Kranz's whistle brought a re- 
sponse in a refined woman's voice. 

“All right, Miss Kranz, I’m coming.” 

From behind a partition emerged a middle-aged lady, 
whose personality suggested a closed chapter of affluence 
and culture. She came slowly forward and smiled in 
expectancy of an introduction. 

“Mrs. Mendel — Mrs. Newman.” 

Mrs. Newman again smiled her well-bred smile. Miss 
Kranz drawing her aside gave her the details of the 
new case. Mrs. Newman listened, while casting side 
glances at Sarah, who stood fumbling with her apron. 
The interview ended with Miss Kranz familiarly tap- 
ping Mrs. Newman's chin and flippantly asking: 
“Verstehen Sie?” 

“All right, my dear,” said Mrs. Newman with motherly 
sweetness, and turned in a businesslike manner to Sarah, 
who timidly drew a step nearer, though she kept her 
eyes fastened on Miss Kranz as she moved to the door. 
She wasi about to take the risk of asking whether the 
children were quite safe downstairs, when Miss Kranz 
sang out : “Oh, Mrs. Newman, send Mrs. Mendel down 
to me again when you are through with her ; her children 
are downstairs.” Sarah's anguish subsided. 

“Sit down, my good woman,” said Mrs. Newman, 
pointing out a chair. Sarah falteringly seated herself. 
Mrs. Newman scanned the premises, then walked lei- 
surely to the front of the room and as leisurely returned 
with a chair. Seating herself she released a gold chain 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


1 66 

from a tiny reel which lay embedded in her ample bosom 
and placed the attached glasses on her nose. 

" Sprechen Sie Deutsch ?” she asked leaning forward 
and compressing her lips. 

Sarah giving her an eager glance said: “Ya” with 
a touch of pride. 

“Oh/’ Mrs. Newman ejaculated, “where do you come 
from ?” 

“Memel.” 

“Well, you are quite German,” Mrs. Newman’s com- 
ment was accompanied by an obviously complimentary 
look. Sarah dropped her eyes and sighed the sigh of one 
who has lost an inheritance. 

“Have you been a widow long?” 

“No.” 

“Was your husband German also?” 

“No, he was from the Baltic provinces.” 

Mrs. Newman concluding she had done enough to put 
the applicant at ease, straightened up for business. 
Sarah perceiving that Mrs. Newman meant to change the 
subject, reflected that her husband’s Russianism had de- 
tracted from the glory of her Germanism. A pained ex- 
pression came into her eyes, and she sighed lightly. 

“You see,” Mrs. Newman began, pointing at the stacks 
of old clothes, “these things are sent here by good peop 1 ?. 
for poor people like you and your children. The things 
are often torn and require mending. That is the work 
you will have to do here. You’ll start at ten o’clock to- 
morrow morning. That will give you time to send the 
children off to school.” Mrs. Newman smiled kindly 
again. “The women are all very nice here. You will’ 
soon make friends. The work is easy, plain sewing, 


THE CELLAR 


167 


you know.” She rose; Sarah followed suit. “Come to- 
morrow at ten,” Mrs. Newman glanced toward the door 
to indicate that Sarah was dismissed. 

Poor Sarah longed to tell her that she was not an 
adept seamstress and vastly preferred work “by ladies.” 
But Mrs. Newman, whose day was too full to allow her 
much time for a single applicant, divining that Sarah 
had things to say (they all had if one gave oneself up 
to them) assumed the forbidding air of the superior, 
which quashed Sarah’s courage. 

“You go down the hall and down the stairs. Miss 
Kranz’s room is on the first floor. Good-by.” The direc- 
tions were given with flawless courtesy. But Mrs. New- 
man turned her back. 

It was many years since Sarah had experienced a 
moment of self-respect and social equality; and the 
rapid termination of the luxury left her miserable. In a 
daze she turned to the door and left hurriedly. 

“Sit down, mama,” Ida whispered when Sarah ap- 
peared in Miss Kranz’s room. Sarah remained standing, 
however, for Miss Kranz, busy writing, gave no indica- 
tion of what was expected of her. Sarah wiped her 
sweaty face with her hands and her sweaty hands on the 
comer of her apron. 

When Miss Kranz finally wheeled round in her chair 
and shot the question, “Well, how about the children?” 
Sarah grew so dizzy that she almost reeled. With the 
irresponsibility of excessive nervousness, she cried : 

“I will not give them away. I suffered the torture 
of bringing my children into the world, I will keep 
them.” A flame of self-assertion burned in her eyes and 
a dare-devil spirit supplanted her timidity. 

The refined Miss Kranz, taken aback, made no reply. 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


1 68 

At the close of the day her notation on the report-card 
of Case No. 31100 read: “Applicant offensively refused 
to commit children.” 


XXXIV 

Shortly before ten o’clock the following morning, 
Sarah, successfully evading an encounter with Miss 
Kranz, stealthily made her way through the spacious hall 
to the work-room. As she paused hesitatingly on the 
threshold, Mrs. Newman looked up, greeted her with the 
cordiality of one meeting another on the same level and 
invited her in. “Take oft* your shawl,” she said as she 
called : “Miss Greenberg, oh, Miss Greenberg !” 

From behind a table piled high with old clothing came 
a little middle-aged woman, whose face betrayed one 
long, bitter struggle with Fate, in which Fate had won. 

“Miss Greenberg, this is Mrs. Mendel.” 

Miss Greenberg in no way indicated that she was af- 
fected by the introduction. Some whispered instruction, 
then Miss Greenberg called in a dry voice : “Come 
missus!” and turned sharply. Mrs. Newman motioned 
Sarah to follow. Sarah did so with bowed head. Miss 
Greenberg stopping at the center of a long, narrow table, 
drew out a vacant chair. 

“Sit down here,” she said to Sarah and walked away. 

Other women seated at the table gave the new woman 
a hasty glance of inspection and bent again over their 
work. Sarah’s senses were numb. At Miss Greenberg’s 
reappearance she grew a bit panicy, and received the 
needle, thread, thimble and pair of scissors with un- 
steady hands. “Try on the thimble,” said Miss Green- 


THE CELLAR 169 

berg in the same dry, lifeless voice, and again left 
abruptly. 

The thimble leapt out of Sarah’s fingers to the floor 
and rolled into an obscure corner of the room. Terror 
struck her heart. She bent here and there in search 
of it, conscious of ten Miss Greenbergs and a dozen 
Mrs. Newmans and a whole roomful of persecuting 
women. She grew hot and sweaty and enraged with 
her lucklessness. Just as she located the thimble Miss 
Greenberg re-appeared. Sarah was seated. 

“Fix this with backhand stitches,” said Miss Green- 
berg, holding up a heavy brown coat in which was a 
rent. Laying the coat on Sarah’s lap Miss Greenberg 
was off again. 

Now nature in her wisdom or folly had omitted from 
Sarah’s composition any aptitude for needlework. She 
had never sewed, had never learned how to sew, and 
had never wanted to learn how to sew. This suddenly 
imposed task was a cruelty. But who saw it as such? 
Who sees it as such to-day? Poverty is an attribute 
which subjects all who possess it to a Procrustean law. 

Sarah tried to comprehend the meaningless words, 
“backhand stitches” and excitedly fumbled with the 
needle and the thread to effect their necessary alliance. 
At last she succeeded in inserting the thread. Her relief 
was only momentary, for she drew the thread the wrong 
way and pulled it out again. Flushing scarlet she more 
nervously attempted the threading a second time. Con- 
cluding the operation, she adjusted the heavy coat to her 
lap. “Backhand stitches !” rang in her ears. What were 
they? She leaned a little toward the neighbor on her 
right to glimpse, if possible, how she did it. The woman 
lifted a face so desiccated and unfriendly that Sarah 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


I/O 

hastily turned the other way. There she encountered a 
placid countenance, as vacant as a cow’s and a broad grin 
that kept the mouth wide open and displayed large, white 
regular teeth. 

“What is the matter, missus?” 

Sarah, fearful of provoking displeasure, looked about 
timorously to see whether Mrs. Newman or Miss Green- 
berg were observing her. She knew instinctively that 
Miss Greenberg was easily moved to anger. 

“You needn’t be afraid; I am allowed to help you.” 
The woman waved her hand as an accompaniment to 
the boast. “I am already an old customer. They all 
ask me when they first come.” Her grin ended in a dulf 
giggle. Sarah gave a hurried nervous glance round. 

“What’s backhand stitches?” she whispered, a timid 
smile on her flushed face. 

“Oh, like that ” the woman said, taking Sarah’s 

coat and needle. 

As Sarah looked on in strained attention, the other’s 
fingers flew deftly and evenly over the rent. But when 
Sarah attempted to imitate, her needle snapped at the 
third stitch. Such agony was expressed in Sarah’s eyes 
that the phlegmatic woman was moved. 

“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “I will get you an- 
other needle.” She turned to her neighbor ; the neighbor 
had no needle to spare. She was about to rise and ap- 
propriate one from the drawer in which the needles were 
kept when Miss Greenberg appeared to investigate the 
new woman’s progress. Had it not been for Sarah’s 
obvious nervousness and distress Miss Greenberg would 
have given the deserved reprimand. As it was she went 
off without comment for another needle. 


THE CELLAR 


171 

“As long as she did not holler, don’t care,” the left- 
hand neighbor encouraged Sarah. 

Miss Greenberg stood over Sarah as she tried once 
more to thread the needle. So the task became utterly im- 
possible and though Miss Greenberg had seen trembling 
hands before, she was moved to thread the needle her- 
self. Abstractedly she lingered beside Sarah, resting one 
hand against the table. Sarah’s instructor bent stealthily 
over the hand, kissed it, and flung up her face beaming 
with a phlegmatic, ingratiating smile. Miss Greenberg 
good-naturedly tapped her on the head. One or two 
women laughed. The woman at Sarah’s right scowled 
and muttered: “Sucker!” Sarah experienced a curious 
sensation of uncleanliness and strangeness to herself. 
She threw a swift glance at the women — the room — and 
struggled to realize her own presence there — her rela- 
tionship to it all. With a sigh she lowered her eyes. She 
sent her needle too deep into the heavy material and it 
snapped again. 

The repeated offense roused Miss Greenberg to a 
sense of her supervisory capacity. She snatched the 
broken needle, went quickly for another and told Sarah 
that there would not be a third. 

Sarah labored over the rent all morning and was ex- 
hausted. 

Her left-hand neighbor initiated her into the way of 
closing shop; she was to stow her needle here, her 
thimble there, et cetera. As the women departed they 
sang out cordial good-by’s to their supervisors and to 
their partners in poverty. The room was finally de- 
serted. Sarth timidly lingered, awaiting Mrs. Newman’s 
instructions. The worthy lady at last appeared, asked 
her why she hadn’t left, and told her to be on time in the 


172 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


morning. “Wasn’t it nice and pleasant?” she asked and, 
waiting for no reply, added : “It’s nice and pleasant,” and 
turned away. 

On the stairs Sarah found the phlegmatic neighbor 
waiting for her, evidently eager to learn Sarah’s pedi- 
gree. Sarah in her misery turned abruptly, as though 
from a bad stench, and left the woman muttering: “Un- 
grateful ! Crank !” 

Miss Greenberg reported to Mrs. Newman that the 
“new case” was “very slow and inefficient.” Mrs. New- 
man, with a wise air, replied Sarah was “that sort, you 
know.” 

Minnie and Jacob were leaving for the afternoon ses- 
sion when Sarah returned, feeling as if she had been gone 
from her children an eternity. Passionately she hugged 
and kissed Bubbele as her heart cried : “Elias ! oh, Elias !” 
And she sank down on the lounge and shook with sobs 
as deep as the misery of her life. Ida and Bubbele, 
frightened and pale, tugged at her skirt and tried to tear 
her hands away from her face. Failing, they, too, burst 
into sobs. But Sarah could not control herself — not even 
for their sake. 

In the evening Mira came again, to Sarah’s immense 
solace. 


XXXV 

From Mira’s manner, as she entered the room, Sarah 
discerned at once that she had a confidence to impart, 
and, therefore, checked her impulse to pour out the tale 
of her tribulations. Mira, however, no less quick to dis- 
cern, cried commiseratingly : 

“Nu, what is it, God mine? You look yellow in the 


THE CELLAR 


173 

face, and your forehead is as furrowed as if the world 
were weighing on your head.” 

Sarah’s lips quivered; she dropped her eyes. Tears 
came in spite of her attempt at self-control. 

“Nu, speak out your heart; it will relieve you,” Mira 
urged. 

“For me there is no relief,” Sarah replied. 

But Mira insisted, and with the telling of her experi- 
ences a faint relief came to Sarah’s soul. At least there 
was one person in the world who understood the smart, 
the sting, the humiliation, the agony of what she was 
going through. 

And it was not Mira’s sympathy alone that consoled ; 
Mira seemed also to have a definite remedy of some sort 
up her sleeve. Every little while, during Sarah’s recital, 
she threw a sidelong glance from her sharp, blue eyes 
and thrust her chin forward as much as to say: “Wait 
till you hear what I have to tell !” And when Sarah 
concluded her tale, she sat up straighter and darted in- 
tenser glances. 

“What is your news?” asked Sarah. 

“What are you talking about?” Mira burst out, as if 
Sarah had been contradicting her. “I am a business 
lady.” 

She answered Sarah’s look of astonishment and inter- 
rogation by opening a package and displaying pieces of 
black buckram edged with wire. 

“They, my relatives, sent me this from Boston. They 
call it bends (Mira’s pronunciation- of “bands”), and 
they told me that I should try to get orders for the bends 
in the millinery stores here in New York. If I succeed, 
they will send me a lot of the buckram and wire, and I 
can make them up myself and sell them at a profit, which 


174 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

will go to me. I went around from store to store and 
I have got orders galore.” She smacked her thin lips, 
settled back in her chair, and looked up as if challenging 
Sarah to mention another person as smart as herself, 
while her knob of red hair nodded back: “I should say 
there isn't anyone as smart as I am.” As an after- 
thought she added: “It is really very nice of my rela- 
tives but since it was not in her nature to give the devil 
a bit more than his due, she quickly hooked on : “But 
they are in Boston. They could not sell in New York 
anyway. So what does it hurt them ?” Another thought 
popped into her head. “Nu, who knows? Mira Cohen 
can yet become a regular business lady.” Her eyes 
moistened. Mira was one of those people who are not 
so sure that the sun shines behind the clouds. She, too, 
was. having a hard struggle, with a “useless” husband, 
an unruly daughter, and a stuttering son. 

For a time both women gazed into space, as though 
trying to fathom the deeps of life. Sarah was the first 
to break the silence by sighing. Then Mira said the 
thing for which Sarah’s curibsity had been palpitating. 

“Who knows — if I get enough orders you can maybe 
help me with the sewing, and we can do the business to- 
gether. If there will be for you a little and for me a 

little it will be enough ” She gave a shrug of her 

shoulders. “Who expects to become a millionaire?” she 
added deprecatingly, as if to propitiate fate. 

Again they gazed into space. Before Sarah’s vision 
passed scenes of the Charities work-room. How she 
loathed it! Would Mira’s “bends” hold a way out? She 
dared not hope so far. Time and again, bending over her 
sewing, which required daily a veritable revolutionizing 
of her nature, she felt it would be more decent to squat 


THE CELLAR 175 

on the curb on Grand Street grinding an organ for pen- 
nies. How she loathed it ! 

Mira, to cheer her, told a story of a poor man who had 
a dog, who was driven by hunger to commit a theft and 
took the dog along. It was in the dead of night. The 
dog, hearing a strange sound, barked. The man tried to 
quiet the animal. “S-sh, dog,” he said, “if I make a suc- 
cessful robbery, you, too, shall have a bone to suck.” 

XXXVI 

Sarah always slunk past Miss Kranz’s office in terror. 
If only she could evade being called upon to give a de- 
cision regarding the children, she thought, until Mira took 
her into partnership, “the world would be mine.” Once 
in the work-room she would breathe easily again and lose 
herself in dreams of a brighter future, in which her two 
rooms on Rutgers Street were filled with buckram, coils 
of wire, thimbles, needles, thread. Around the table sat 
she, Minnie, Ida, and even Jacob, manufacturing bands. 
In this glory, the work-room faded into non-existence. 

One day Miss Kranz opened the door upon a most 
vivid dream. Crash went Sarah’s castle in the air! 
“Woe is me, if only she has not come to tell me I must 
give the children away !” The whole miserable reality 
overwhelmed her. 

“Well, Mrs. Mendel,” Miss Kranz called, as Sarah’s 
soul made its descent from the air-castle to hell. 

“Well, dear !” came from Mrs. Newman. Miss Kranz 
turned from Sarah, greeted the supervisor, and the two 
walked away together. 

Had Sarah only known that she need have no fear! 
Those whose province it was to mould the destinies of 


176 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


the worthy poor had decided that it would be better to 
wait until Sarah herself begged for shelter for her chil- 
dren. They proceeded on the theory that if a man wished 
to affect small feet he should be given small shoes and 
allowed to feel the pinch of them until he himself cried 
out. But the Charities did not know all the facts. How 
could they know the facts when Sarah had not told them ? 
What reason had they to suspect that a source of income 
rising to seventy-five cents and even a dollar a week 
flowed from Jacob; that Minnie’s mothering of the butch- 
er’s twins yielded another munificent sum ; that there ex- 
isted a sympathetic relative who, according to his wife's 
version, was cursed with a good nature that blessed the 
Mendels with an occasional gift of money, and that there 
was a conscience-stricken compatriot, Mira? 

For some time after her last call, Mira did not come 
again. Twice she had sent a dollar bill by the sympa- 
thetic relative and a message that she would visit Sarah 
soon. But ten full weeks passed without her putting in 
appearance and Sarah decided that if the mountain did 
not come to her, she would go to the mountain. 

Her dream of piles of buckram, endless coils of wire, 
and quantities of needles, thimbles, and thread, with chil- 
dren helping, had become a fact at Mira’s home. When 
she entered, she, found Mira heated, with black streaks 
discoloring her face, bent busily over her work. 

Mira flushed self-consciously. She had received many 
orders for the bands, enough, in fact, to keep someone 
else beside herself and children busy. Yet who can blame 
Mira? He who has just saved himself from drowning 
is not eager to go back into the deep water to rescue an- 
other. For the first time since she had come to Amer- 
ica, Mira enjoyed the comfort of knowing that twenty- 


THE CELLAR 


1 77 


five dollars rested in the bank for her. How could she 
be expected to share the intoxication with a mere com- 
patriot? Besides, when she had told Sarah her news 
and had suggested partnership, she had done so unpre- 
meditatedly, under the swift impulse of pity for her un- 
happy friend. 

The evening passed in conversation on the various 
phases of their respective lots in life, while in the back of 
each of their minds danced the promised partnership. 
Mira, however, said not a word on the subject. Indeed, 
a few minutes after Sarah's arrival, she and her chil- 
dren cleared away all traces of the new industry. 

Sarah walked home with an intensity of bitterness rag- 
ing in her heart such as even she had never experienced. 
In the days that followed Elias's death, she had been 
dazed. Now she was as painfully sensitive as an open 
wound. She saw in all its clearness what lay ahead for 
her and her children. They were doomed forever to pov- 
erty, to sordidness, the lowest dregs of humiliation. The 
cup of hope had been held to her lips only to be dashed to 
the ground. 

All night, wide-eyed and sleepless, she lay staring de- 
spairingly into the darkness. Jumbled thoughts, yet none 
the less vivid, tossed in her brain. Her fate was to be 
innumerable years of serfdom in the Charities work- 
room, with the cow-like creature always at her right and 
the yellow, shrivelled half-corpse at her left. And worse 
yet, no other fate seemed likely, even for her children. 
She pictured them branded with crosses on the chests, 
domineered over by rough Gerry Society officials ; in 

maturity cast out into the heartless world like herself 

And by then she would be dead! . . . She lay in frozen 
rigidity. A wave of misery seemed to surge over her 


t 


178 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

head, so that she gasped for breath. . . . She shook her- 
self. Suddenly she was gripped by the fear that in such 
deep despair lay destruction. Her soul struggled as out 
of a quicksand toward hopefulness. Why this despair? 
Was she not able-bodied? Was all the world but the 
Charities closed to her? Could she not do something, 

too — do something She sat bolt upright, spurred 

by a new impetus. ... If success were possible for the 
homely, unrefined, red-headed Mira, why was not suc- 
cess possible for her, too? If Mira’s children, one 
“meshuga,” another a “mecka,” could be of help to her 
in a business, why could not her children be of much 
greater help? Why could she not be a business lady, 
too? 

XXXVII 

“Minnie,” Sarah said the next evening (her daugh- 
ter had just returned from a club meeting at the Queen’s 
Daughters, Jacob was out selling his papers, and the 
younger children were on the street), “I want you to 
go over to Mira. Say you passed and just stepped in. 
When she is not looking, take a piece of black buckram 
with wire sewed on the edge. You will see pieces like 
that lying around there. Hide it under your dress and 
bring it home.” 

Minnie knew all about Mira’s “bends” business, hav- 
ing heard her mother tell of it to the Sympathetic Rela- 
tive. 

Sarah held her head high as she spoke and put a touch 
of defiance into her manner, in anticipation of opposi- 
tion from her young daughter. 

Minnie looked at her mother at first uncomprehend- 


THE CELLAR 


179 


ingly, then in astonishment. Though her intuition 
warned her that she would rouse her mother's displeas- 
ure, she answered in a fretful, self-defensive tone: 

“I don' wanna, mama.” 

Sarah was well aware that her request was no 
credit to her motherhood, but it was not the province of 
a child of hers to tell her so. She grew angry. Her 
upper lip twitched, her lids fluttered, her body stiffened. 
She advanced upon Minnie, ready to shake the child, 
who withdrew into a corner of the room. 

“You do not want to?” she shouted. The two glared 
at each other, Minnie, her thumb in her mouth, her head 
bent and eyes raised. 

“Didn' you yourself send me back wid the nickel that 
time to the grocery store when I brang it too much for 
you ? By Mira to go and take is stealing ! I don’ wanna 
steal.” 

A slap in the face would have been easier to bear. 
Sarah took a hasty step forward, raised her fist and 
slowly, taking a breath after each word, shouted at the 
cowering child : 

“All black years on your head, you ungrateful worm, 
you ! I slave for you to keep you home. To the Gerry 
Society I ought to send you, all of you, where others 
send their children. All of you I ought to send there. 
Instead I slave for you and fight with everybody to keep 
you together, and now you stand before me, small as you 
are, and call me a thief!” The passionate outburst was 
so out of keeping with what the child's diffident refusal 
merited that even Sarah realized it as soon as the 
words were out of her mouth. True to human nature, 
she had sought self-defense in the exaggeration of the 
offense. 


i8o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie, petrified but not crushed, sobbed as she cried : 

“Why don’ you send Jacob, or Ida ’stead a me?” 

Here Ida entered. She stood at the door a moment 
rubbing her nose with the cuff of her dress; her face 
was blue and pinched with the cold. 

“Wots a madder, ma?” she asked. 

“Go away !” Sarah shouted. The child staggered back. 

Sarah flung out of the room into the bedroom and 
threw herself upon the bed. But her pounding heart 
made a recumbent position impossible. She jumped up 
again and returned to the room-of-all-affairs, where 
Minnie, crouching in a corner, was silently weeping. Ida, 
seated on the lounge, sprang to her feet at sight of her 
angry mother. 

“Your sister,” Sarah cried to Ida, “is a whole honest 
lady. Maybe, my younger daughter, you are such a lady, 
too?” Her tone carried bitter sarcasm. Taking a deep 
breath and coming close to Ida, she began emphatically : 
“Now, Ida ” And she repeated her demand. 

For the very life of her Ida could not understand why 
sucK a fuss had been made over such a little thing. 

“Sure I’ll go. Sh’ll I go now ? I’ll take Bubbele along, 
hah?” 

“All right,” said Sarah, with averted eyes. Sarah 
never forgot that scene with Minnie. 

Ida left and in half an hour returned, bringing the 
Mendels’ future in her little hand. 

XXXVIII 

For three days Sarah and Minnie were not on speak- 
ing terms. The evening of the third day they happened 
to be left alone together in the home. Minnie was busily 


THE CELLAR 


181 


engaged in her studies; Sarah was struggling to edge 
pieces of black buckram with black wire. Suddenly her 
needle snapped, and the broken point pierced under her 
fingernail. She shrieked with the pain. Minnie, terri- 
fied, jumped up and rushed to her. “Mama!” she 

cried, “oh, mama, mama ” Her little face was drawn 

with compassion as she watched Sarah extricate the 
point. “It hurts you so,” the child cooed tenderly. 
“Suck the blood away wid your mouth.” She gazed up 
at her mother, the deepest solicitude in her lovely gray 
eyes, the gentlest love in her heart. Sarah gave no sign 
of appreciation. 

Settled again at her work, Minnie timidly called to her 
mother from the sink, to which she had gone to wash 
away blood stains: 

“Ma, kin I help you?” 

“Help !” shouted Sarah angrily, adding, as if her de- 
cision were the result of deliberation : “You will all help. 
Your easy days are over, the days when your mother 
alone will slave. You are orphans. You must help.” 
She dropped her eyes. “You stand back and call your 
mother a thief !” she concluded. 

It was not Sarah, but Sarah’s tongue, which spoke. 
How much more complex were her feelings ; and how dif- 
ferent was the language of her storm-tossed heart ! 

Minnie came closer to her mother and nestled against 
her unfriendly body. 

“Ma, I didn’ call you a thief ; only Miss Lacey always 
says, too, we should always be honest.” 

“You always have some excuse to take you away from 
your mother and your sisters and brother. First it was 
Abie, now it is Miss Lacey — Cracey — Macey in that gen- 
tile charity ” Sarah’s eyes gleamed with so strange 


1 82 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

' a light that Minnie moved away from her and presently 
went downstairs. Standing at the front door of the tene- 
ment, her thoughts wandered back to Henry Street and 
Abie. Where was he ? The days of Henry Street 
seemed so long ago ! Her “papa” sailed before her tear- 
ful vision. She stood bent and wrinkled — a little old 
woman of eight. 

Sarah, left alone, applied herself even more zealously 
to her sewing. Several things accounted for her bitter 
mood. She had been reprimanded by the ever-scolding 
Miss Greenberg; Miss Kranz had passed her in the hall 
without greeting her ; upon that had followed the strain of 
finding shops where buckram and wire could be bought, 
and the wearisomeness of learning to make the bands 
without instruction. Each difficulty brought fresh ter- 
rors ; each fresh terror was fought with giant might. She 
was a quivering mass of raw nerves. 

* * * * * * 

In a week Sarah began to solicit trade. She plodded 
from one millinery shop to another — from Grand Street 
to Division Street, from Division to Delancey. She so- 
licited from every shop regardless of whether it had al- 
ready disposed of its custom or not, offering prices more 
attractive than others, and, where she was denied, plead- 
ing: “I am a widow with four children and I must sup- 
port them.” Within a month she acquired a fair clientele. 
The children were ordered to put their shoulders to the 
wheel. It became a busy household. 

Mornings Sarah continued to work at the Charities, 
since the bird in the hand could not be lightly tossed 
aside, and she planned to remain one more week so as 
to assure a safe margin, then she would throw up the 
work and also refuse to take alms. 


THE CELLAR 


183 

Before the week was up, however, a contretemps oc- 
curred to upset her arrangements. Mira, informed by 
one of Sarah’s dissatisfied customers that Sarah had be- 
come her competitor, betook herself to the Mendel home 
early one morning and told Sarah for the second time in 
the course of their friendship just what she thought of 
her. And this time Mira did not forgive until the day 
of Sarah’s funeral. The scene wholly unnerved Sarah. 
At the Charities work-room she was almost too unstrung 
to bear Miss Greenberg’s bad humor and fault-finding. 
The efimax came when Miss Kranz summoned her at 
closing time and announced that the Charities would 
withdraw their payment of her rent. The Charities had 
“smelt a rat” in Sarah’s continued satisfaction with the 
pittance allowed her for her labors in the work-room, 
which, they knew, was insufficient for the full support 
of her family. As she did not cry out from the pinch of 
the small shoes, they concluded that she had an unac- 
knowledged source of income. Miss Kranz, as she voiced 
her suspicion, observed Sarah’s reaction as intently as if 
she were putting her through the Third Degree. Sarah 
was uninformed in the ways of the grafter, else she 
might have taken the precaution to avert this suspicion. 
She stared at Miss Kranz, her soul outraged and indig- 
nant, her body quivering from head to toe. Finally she 
took the plunge she had been longing to take all the 
months, safe margin or no safe margin. 

“You nothing you ” she cried, “you independent 

nobody — you who would die of fright at the remotest 
prospect of enduring my hardships and suffering — you 
dare to stand there brazenly accusing me of swindling 
vou for your dirty alms? Why, my fingers and heart 
burned at the very touch of it — T prayed for death to be 


1 84 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


spared the humiliation You little, empty crea- 

ture. . . . And that shrunken, dried-out Miss Greenberg 
is one of a pair with you. At home we would not have 
had you for our servants.” 

Poor Sarah! In her outrage she grossly exaggerated 
the weaknesses of these people. She did not realize that 
they, as much as she, were the victims of an all-too- 
sorry system. 

For years afterward, when Charity officials needed to 
cite a case of ingratitude (had they not rescued the 
woman from the very gutter?), Case No. 31100 was pro- 
duced. 

Sarah, for her part, flung the Charities far, far from 
her, and from that day concentrated on the bands busi- 
ness with the fierce determination with which men and 
animals fight in a life-and-death struggle. 


PART III 
BANDS 


PART III 


BANDS 

Were not money restricted to its particular kind of 
speech, a certain one thousand dollars lying deposited in 
the Bowery Bank of New York City might have told an 
interesting tale of what it had done to disrupt a family 
of a mother and four children. But money is in honor 
bound to speak for and not against a family. 

With the avarice of one whose soul has too long been 
starved of its needs, Sarah took to the making of money. 
As the first deposit of one hundred dollars in the bank 
was swelled by a second hundred dollars and this by a 
third, she was spurred on to lash herself and her chil- 
dren into ever greater activity in the bands’ business. 

Cutting, wiring, counting, packing, and selling filled the 
days. On no pretext was a child exempt from the daily 
duty assigned to it. Sarah stood over her offspring em- 
ployees with an insistence verging on mania. If a child 
said it was ill, Sarah sensed pretense; in the claim that 
school lessons must be studied she saw only an attempt 
to shirk. The bands had to be manufactured above all. 

“Do you want to go back to Henry Street? Do you 
want to be thrown out even of a cellar? Do you want 
to go to the Charities? Another time you will go. I 
have done enough for you.” So she would shout down 
their other interests. Her vulgarity and aggressiveness 
cowed them into capitulation. 

Five years had passed since Ida appropriated Mira’s 
187 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


1 88 

sample. The family now occupied a five-room flat on 
Third Street, the East Side’s Up Town of those days. 
The largest bedroom had been converted into a work- 
shop. At one end mouldy, dusty buckram was piled to 
the ceiling, buckram that Sarah had purchased at a bar- 
gain from a small dealer for a sum far below what the 
regular buckram dealers charged, and as it served her 
purpose she took much pride in the discovery. “It would 
be mighty well for you,” she often boasted to the chil- 
dren, “if you took after your mother in resourcefulness.” 
The sill of the bespattered window in the room was 
stacked with wire ; the floor was littered with pieces of 
waste buckram, wire, thread, paper and rolling wads of 
dust. Amid the chaos the children sat on homely wooden 
chairs with their backs bent, their faces sweaty and be- 
smirched. Immediately after school, began the session 
for work, and it continued far into the night. Saturdays, 
Sundays, and holidays were distinguished by even longer 
hours of toil. They cut, they sewed, they counted and 
tied. At first they cut with inadequate shears and sewed 
by hand ; then Sarah invested in sharper shears and a 
labor-saving machine. Though the children expected re- 
lief from these innovations, none came, for Sarah in- 
sisted on a greater output. 

Indeed, soon they came to feel they had a “regular 
boss,” not a mother; that their new and more spacious 
abode was not a home but a “regular shop,” Jacob, a 
“regular operator,” and the girls “regular shop girls.” If 
they complained when Sarah happened to be in a tender 
mood she reasoned with them : “Kinderlech, money is an 
indispensable crutch in this world ; without it you walk 
lame and everybody can come along and throw you over. 
That costs blood. Oh, how they spill your blood! If 


BANDS 


189 


by sweating a little you can walk firm on two feet, isn’t 
it worth while? Come, don’t be children. Listen to 
reason.” 


XL 

Sarah’s patrons included a Mrs. Tannenbaum, who 
was well acquainted with the millinery trade. Sympa- 
thizing with Sarah in her valiant struggle, she kept her 
informed of Mira’s doings, of advance fashions, of new 
competitors, in fact, of all happenings in the small hat- 
dealers’ world. 

“There is a new man in the feather end come in from 
Chicago,” she announced one day. 

Sarah received the news with lukewarm interest. Her 
own specialty could not be affected by the intruder. 
Later in their talk Mrs. Tannenbaum referred to the 
man as a Mr. Pollack. Sarah startled, remained silent 
a perceptible moment, then asked for his first name. 

“Leopold.” 

Could it possibly be Leopold Pollack of Memel, the 
tall, thin, sensitive Leopold Pollack of her girlhood, her 
free-thinker lover ? The question dived through her 
heart like a swallow, in its downward sweep casting aside 
all of the sordid past that stood between them, and in its 
upward flight raising a full realization of a personal life 
closed and done with forever. A lump rose in Sarah’s 
throat. She dropped her eyes, and sighed. 

But how could Leopold Pollack have been in America 
long enough to go into business without her knowing it? 
To Sarah, business followed only upon a long preliminary 
struggle. Mrs. Tannenbaum’s description of Leopold 
Pollack, however, agreed, on the whole, with the appear- 


190 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

ance of the man she knew ; and she was inclined rather 
to believe it was he. 

“I knew him when I was a girl,” she finally remarked, 
to explain her interest. 

“You knew him when you were a girl? Wouldn’t it 
be a joke if it were really he? And how funny I men- 
tioned him!” Mrs. Tannenbaum chuckled. “It’s some- 
times the queerest thing how life works.” She was 
keenly interested in the possible development of the ro- 
mantic episode. 

Sarah, for days, went about her work abstractedly, 
living over again scenes of her girlhood. She was listen- 
ing to Leopold preaching atheism to her as they walked 
together in the woods, and anon he was kissing her, prais- 
ing her gray eyes. 

She would wrench herself away from these memories, 
angry with herself for her sentimentality, and force her 
mind to work in its usual way, in the way that took only 
the children into account, their education which was to 
insure them against economic stress such as she had 
known and make them what she had not been able to be. 
As for her own life, it was to be over with when these 
duties were accomplished. Her lot was to work up the 
business for the children’s sake. But mixed with her 
thoughts was a vague disapprobation of the scheme of 
things, by which personal happiness, personal satisfac- 
tion in living were made impossible. She would compare 
her life to a desert — a stretch of nothingness, barren of 
all joyousness, desolate, except for a burning passion for 
the mountain heights of attainment. 

In the meantime her millinery friend was working be- 
hind the scenes. 

As Sarah stepped into Mrs. Tannenbaum’s store one 


BANDS 


191 

day, she came face to face with Leopold. The world lost 
its reality and for a moment Sarah was bereft of her fac- 
ulties. Her bag fell to the floor from her limp hand; she 
entwined her fingers as in prayer; tears gushed to her 
eyes. 

“Leopold !” It was like a cry out of the dark. 

A moment of profound silence, then the man, who had 
perceptibly aged and grown thinner, stepped forward, 
his sensitive lips quivering as he took Sarah into his 
arms. 

“Sarah ! For God’s sake, Sarah !” 

Eagerly they interrogated each other. When had he 
come to America ? How was it he had not let her know 
of his coming? Surely some mutual acquaintance would 
have given him her address. How had he, too, hap- 
pened to go into the millinery business? 

Leopold satisfactorily answered all her questions. 

When had she come to America? How had Elias 
fared ? Dead ! Four children ? Had she had a struggle ? 

Leopold Pollack had begun life equipped with ideals 
which he had discarded in the shuffle. To the man who 
does not start out on a smooth platform already pre- 
pared for him, ideals may be a leaden encumbrance: 
at least Leopold found them so. Six years before, he had 
left Memel for South Africa where rich relatives had 
taken him into their narrow environment, and to fit into 
it he had been obliged to cramp his wings. Several years 
of discontent resolved him to quit. He came to America, 
where he tried his hand at customer-peddling, insurance, 
and what not. Just now, through a friend’s “lift,” he 
was endeavoring to set himself up itf the feather busi- 
ness. His ideals were now replaced by a warm cynicism 
as to the greater advantages accruing the poor man in one 


192 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


land as against another land; to be poor, he was con- 
vinced, was hell in the old country — to be poor was hell 
in the new country. 

Sarah's feelings blended with his; her heart warmed 
with a sense of kinship for him and with gratification at 
the similarity in their development. 

When they finally parted, Leopold walked away, feel- 
ing strangely young again. His step was brisker, his 
whole manner more alert. Sarah's eager interest in him, 
which she felt too greatly to mask, had fed his vanity. 
It had come like a fresh breeze in a sultry night, scatter- 
ing the clouds of his cynicism. Sarah was not the girl 
he loved years ago, nevertheless she was a comely 
woman ; in fact, he found himself thinking she had im- 
proved with the years. 

She was, indeed, a very different Sarah from the Sarah 
of the Charities work-room. In her well-made, tailored 
suit she presented a fine full figure. Her neglected body 
had received the physician’s and dentist’s care ; the former 
had rid her of her vermiform appendix, and, by the lat- 
ter’s art, her cheeks were no longer sunken. She radiated 
freshness and vivacity and might have been taken for a 
woman of not more than thirty years. 

As the incidents of the meeting revolved in Leopold's 
mind, the love that had waned but had never been ex- 
tinguished in his heart began to smoulder afresh. As he 
recalled their youthful clandestine meetings, an old void, 
which no other woman had ever filled, was pricked into 
existence again. Sarah was a widow. Perhaps the dream 
of his youth might still be realized. Who knew! Leo- 
pold shrugged his shoulders. The thought, “She even has 
a successful hat-bands’ business,’’ came to his mind and 
was swiftly dismissed. He himelf had not been success- 


BANDS 


193 


ful ; he did not seem to be cut out for the sordid business 
of buying and selling. He could not go about wearing 
the salesman’s ready-made smile, simulating affability, 
dancing attendance on customers. He had not the trades- 
man’s nature, and being a man he could not, like Sarah, 
adapt himself, the gift of adaptability being divinely 
vested in women. 

Ruminating thus upon his flaccid career, he drifted 
into melancholy and regrets. Who could tell — had life 
not wrenched Sarah from him, how different it all might 
have been ! He sighed. In an effort to shake off his 
oppressive feelings, he walked more rapidly, saying to 
himself : 

“Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — three more days until 
we see each other again.” 


XLI 

“Mama said a hundred times you shouldn’t give the 
full gross,” Ida insisted. 

Minnie, drawing herself up, replied defiantly: 

“I don’t care what mama says. If I count I am going 
to count a full gross for each package. She isn’t going 
to boss me about that. If you want to skin, go ahead.” 

“Listen to that disgusting thing. Calls mama a skin !” 

Beckie (Bubbele of old) turned her head away from 
the machine over which she sat bent. 

“Oh, stop fighting. You make me side,” she called, and 
busied herself again over the machine. 

Minnie and Ida eyed each other like game-cocks. 
Then, as if better thoughts had come, they went on count- 
ing the bands. 

Minnie’s lips moved and articulated: “Hundred forty- 


194 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


three, hundred forty-four.” She had counted the full 
gross loud enough to be heard. “For spite,” was Ida’s 
interpretation. Anger born of dislike swelled her heart. 
The two girls were always at daggers’ drawn. Ida, will- 
ingly unscrupulous, felt she was carrying out her moth- 
er’s orders, while Minnie was exaggeratedly scrupulous 
because she could not be otherwise. And Ida saw spite 
in it, and the affectation of a “high-tone lady.” She 
dashed the batch of bands from Minnie’s hands and sent 
them scattering to the floor. The two confronted each 
other belligerently. 

At this juncture the door opened and Sarah entered. 
She was returning from a long day’s selling, tired and 
hot and perspiring. With the quick perception that time 
had cultivated, she noted that her daughters were quar- 
reling. She sighed wearily. 

“Mama,” shrieked Ida, “I’m not going to work with 
her any more.” 

Sarah asked no questions. Minnie’s eyes scornfully 
regarded her sister. 

“Go on, tell!” she cried. “Maybe mama’ll kill me.” 
Tears of impotence gathered in her eyes. As in child- 
hood, Minnie was still singularly lacking in controversial 
weapons of self-defense. Under attack her mind refused 
to function, and speech failed her. But when she knew 
she was right, she firmly, even if silently, held her ground. 
Her part in the family quarrels rarely extended beyond 
her refusal to carry out orders that were opposed to her 
principles. Unable to say more and unwilling to lose 
her self-control in their presence, she dropped the few 
bands in her hands and left the room. 

She walked into the parlor, the room that chiefly be- 
spoke the Mendels’ affluence, with its suite of green plush 


BANDS 


195 


furniture, long looking-glass, pink silk tidy over the man- 
telpiece, green plush album, rose-patterned rug, stiff 
Nottingham lace curtains, and crudely colored, hand- 
painted portraits of Elias and Sarah's departed parents. 
Flinging herself into a rocking-chair, Minnie indulged in 
a brief shower of tears, then sat pondering on the sor- 
didness of their family life and wondering why her 
mother had not, as usual, reprimanded her. 

The reason was that Sarah had keenly detected that 
this was a quarrel about one of those points on which 
Minnie was inflexible ; she had long ago decided that 
when it came to a question of real loyalty Minnie was 
not to be depended upon ; never would she give a short 
count, never would she substitute the poorer grade of 
buckram for the better. .Sarah had often sighed re- 
signedly as does a housewife who, finding one decayed 
apple in her purchase of a quantity of otherwise excellent 
fruit, concludes to accept the bargain and not to hold it 
against the dealer. 

This time, furthermore, feeling it was more expedient 
to propitiate Minnie, she followed her to the front room. 

“I bought you a waist." 

Minnie turned to face her mother standing in the door. 

“Yes?" 

Only that morning had Minnie complained that her 
one waist was out at the elbows, and here her mother 
had already bought her another waist! The girl, who 
had not expected such prompt attention to her need, was 
touched. 

“Try it on." 

While Minnie untied the parcel, Ida and Beckie saun- 
tered in. A new garment for any member of the family, 
even after a rumpus, was a matter of general interest. 


196 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie went to the pier glass, took off the waist she was 
wearing and put on the new one, of a dark red flannel 
with straight up and down rows of black soutache trim- 
ming ; exactly to Minnie’s taste. She was about to fasten 
it when Beckie stepped forward, raised Minnie’s arm 
and said: “It’s damaged, I think.” “It is,” agreed Ida. 
Sarah had bought the waist for twenty-nine cents ! From 
the way she inspected it now one would have inferred 
that the stain on the sleeve was a surprise to her. 

“I can’t wear it,” said Minnie, quickly slipping it off. 
She tossed it toward a chair, but it missed the mark and 
fell to the floor. Sarah was enraged. Not only had she 
failed to palm the waist off on Minnie, but she also de- 
tected, she thought, scorn of her thrift. Snatching the 
waist from the floor, she waved it as if to strike 
Minnie. 

“You ungrateful worm, you, it doesn’t suit you?” 

The retort came so quickly that Minnie, wholly un- 
prepared, was frightened, all the more so when, glancing 
into the looking-glass, she caught sight of her mother’s 
distorted face. Without replying, she picked up her old 
waist and began to put it on. Her seeming unconcern 
added to Sarah’s fury. 

“You unappreciative pig, you,” she cried. “I walked 
with blisters on my feet to get you a red waist, as you 
said you wanted, and now when I bring it, you throw it 
in my face.” 

This distorting of the fact, as well as the implication 
that the waist was unearned, sent a wave of deep re- 
sentment through Minnie and loosened her tongue for 
the moment. 

“Don’t I work?" she exploded. 


BANDS 


l 97 


“Work! All great big lumps like you work. What 
then — a mother should support you? But do you ever 
do more than you have to for the business, like the other 
children ?” Sarah stopped for want of breath ; however, 
her manner foretold there was more to come. “It will 
soon all end,” she added, stressing each word with a pe- 
culiar intonation that struck all of them. Beckie, look- 
ing up in surprise, asked : 

“What do you mean ?” 

“Never mind,” said the mother, stalking out of the 
room, “it — will — soon — all — end !” 

“What do you think she means ?” Beckie whispered to 
Ida. Ida shrugged her shoulders. Minnie turned to the 
glass to finish dressing. The two girls went back to the 
work-room. 

Minnie peered at her reflection. The glare of anger 
lingered in her large gray eyes under which the dark rings 
had deepened. She was paler than usual and looked 
troubled and unhappy. A lump stuck in her throat. 

“You’re sick of this,” she communed with her image 
in the glass. “You’ll give up high school and go to work 
in an office. . . . Maybe you’ll even make enough money 
to give Jacob a little every week so he won’t have to 
take from her. . . . It’s always the bank, the bank! We 
don’t count. . . . Buys a fire-stained waist on Baxter 
Street. All the girls at high school look nice. I should 
look like a beggar ! . . . I don’t do as much for the busi- 
ness as the others because — I don’t cheat. They make me 
sick.” 

She dried her eyes, finished dressing, arranged her hair 
a little more becomingly, then went into the adjoining 


room. 


198 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

At that moment the door opened, and Jacob entered, 
accompanied by another young man — Abie Ratkin. 

XLII 

At the beginning of a new term in the College of the 
City of New York, Jacob Mendel had several times dur- 
ing roll-call wondered, half unwillingly, when he heard 
Abraham Ratkin’s name: “Can that be Abie Ratkin of 
Henry Street?” And Abraham Ratkin had wondered 
freely: “Can that be Minnie Mendel’s brother?” Finally 
Abraham decided to note carefully whose deep-voiced 
“present” came in response to “Jacob Mendel.” At the 
end of the session he looked up his new classmate. Im- 
mediately they recognized each other, and enjoyed a self- 
conscious, yet wholesome laugh together. 

“See you at the end of the classes,” said Abraham. 

“All right.” 

As they walked out of the college building that after- 
noon Jacob asked Abraham to come home with him, as- 
suring him the family would be glad to see him. Abra- 
ham, curious about Minnie, and as it was not out of his 
way to his own home, accepted. 

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” cried Minnie, with a light 
laugh. “If it isn’t Abie Ratkin!” 

Abraham .eddened and stood for a moment fascinated. 
In contrast with the only women he knew, his plain, sober 
mother and sisters, Minnie appeared like a baffling 
enigma. This Minnie standing before him with her head 
thrown gracefully back on a long white neck was not the 
Minnie of Henry Street! Though Minnie had regular 
features, her charm lay rather in some subtle, haunting 
expression in her eyes, which were now alight with pleas- 


BANDS 


199 

ure. Unlike his mother’s and sisters’, her voice was low 
and musical; her manner soft and modest. 

Hesitating only an instant, he approached and held out 
his hand as he joined in her laughter with a self-con- 
scious, broad smile. 

“Ma ! Beck ! Ida !” Minnie called excitedly. “Guess 
who’s here! You’ll never guess who’s here.” 

The sudden amicable summons brought them quickly, 
all agog. 

“Nu, mein Gott, Abie Ratkin !” Sarah cried : the two 
girls echoed her astonishment. 

By a little coaxing he was prevailed upon to join 
them in a feast of tea, cookies, and jam. 

“What is the news with your family?” Sarah asked 
with peculiar eagerness. 

Abraham, still confused by the cordial reception and 
the unexpected, insistent invitation, permitted himself a 
moment in which to collect his thoughts. 

“Well,” he began, “let’s see. My uncle, mama’s 
brother, has taken very good care of us all these years. 
My sisters are both grown up and go to high school, and 
I go to college.” Here he coughed over a crumb in his 
throat. Sarah, in constrained expectancy, awaited what 
he had to say next. Had his mother married again? 
That was what she wanted to know. The question of re- 
marriage had been much in her mind of late. Leopold 
Pollack was courting her ; and when the children seemed 
to be impervious to her discipline, marriage to Leopold 
held a promise of the best solution. It was this refuge 
she had had in mind when an hour earlier she had cried : 
“It will soon all end.” The children, she felt at trying 
times, needed a man’s discipline; she herself must be re- 
lieved ; sewing, selling, managing all the details of a 


200 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


home and a business were too much for one woman ; 
and Leopold was right when he urged these con- 
siderations upon her. His persuasive powers were 
bringing her closer and closer to yielding. She even de- 
luded herself into the belief that it was chiefly these con- 
siderations which were influencing her decision and not 
her hearts desire. Leopold that very day had been most 
persistent in his suit. 

“So your mother never married again?” asked Sarah, 
looking away as if she intended that he alone should hear 
her question. 

Abraham had a boy’s pride in his mother. She had 
adapted herself gracefully to well-being, managed a ser- 
vant with dignity, ran an orderly, comfortable home, and 
dressed in good style. 

“Oh, no,” he said, “why should she marry again ? She 
is happy just with us. You ought to see her. She looks 
fine.” 

The boy, Sarah thought jealously, spoke with more 
enthusiasm of his mother than her children did of her, 
although she had slaved ten times harder for them. 
Small wonder that Abie’s mother was happy. Perhaps 
had she had to manage all these years on her own ca- 
pacity for work, she would not have found it so easy to 
remain without the protection of a man. But, as always 
when Sarah tried to argue herself into justifying her 
marriage with Leopold, another and a finer impulse held 
her back — fear that harm might result for her children. 

As the girls conversed with Abraham, she listened ab- 
stractedly ; her mind drifting to gray pictures of the time 
when the girls would be grown and have beaux, and 
Jacob would have his sweetheart. The business would 
then devolve even more heavily upon her; and later, 


BANDS 


201 


when they would leave to establish homes of their own. 
she would be lonely — left alone — that would be her re- 
ward. 

“A penny for your thoughts,” Abraham laughingly 
called to her, with a shy glance at Minnie for her ap- 
proval of his jocularity. 

Sarah dropped her eyes. It was as though Abie's 
mother with her old critical attitude were sitting there 
prying into her heart. “She would be ready to spit 
upon me as a wicked woman,” passed through Sarah’s 
mind. She felt ashamed, and selfish. In an impulsive 
desire to redeem herself, she coaxed Minnie, as if no 
altercation had occurred between them, to eat more cook- 
ies and put more milk in her tea. The blue rings under 
her daughter’s eyes cut the mother to the heart. 

“How do you think my girls look?” she asked Abra- 
ham with assumed gaiety. 

Abraham laughingly proclaimed them all “beauties.” 

Beckie was a really lovely little girl, with shining blue 
eyes and curving baby lips that seemed always to say 
“kiss me, come kiss me.” Ida, though the stamp of ill- 
nature was impressed on her face, had a curious 
piquancy. Her greatest beauty was her wealth of golden 
hair. Sarah, who knew her children were not cast in 
the ordinary mould, enjoyed an unspoken pride in 
them. 

“But you,” said Abraham, “you are so much better- 
looking. I would never have known you.” 

Sarah flushed; she made no reply. She was pleased; 
but at the same time she was hurt that her own children 
had never remarked on her improved appearance. Leo- 
pold had complimented her many times. If only her 
children were a little proud, a little fond of their mother, 


202 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


she might find greater joy in living for them alone. She 
drew a deep sigh. 

Soon Abraham rose to leave. Shaking hands with 
Minnie, he asked, with awkward facetiousness, if she 
wished to be called Miss Mendel or Mildred. She pre- 
ferred plain Minnie. They laughed, while their young 
hearts fluttered with the self-consciousness of adoles- 
cence. 

“Never would I have thought he would grow into such 
a nice young man,” commented Sarah when Abraham 
had gone. But for the timorous, self-depreciative mood 
into which the visitor from the past had cast her, she 
would have told her son that he ought to speak as ap- 
preciatingly of her as Abraham had spoken of his mother. 

XLIII 

This visit was followed by others, but never again did 
Abraham find the family ready to entertain him at the 
tea-table. They remained in the work-room, harassed, 
quarreling. After the first two or three visits formality 
was discarded ; he became again the Abie of Henry Street, 
in whose presence it was not necessary even to keep the 
current of irritation under cover. Remembering their 
quarrelsomeness, of the old days, Abraham marveled that 
they had not yet outgrown it. With the exception of 
Minnie who, though she often raised her voice above the 
others, seemed to be just, they all annoyed him. And 
Minnie, he felt, ought not to be argumentative. It would 
have pleased him far better had she held herself in dig- 
nified silence. But he never could muster sufficient cour- 
age to tell her so. 

After a time he resented his interest in the Mendels. 


BANDS 


203 


When he should have been concentrating on his studies, 
he found himself drifting off to thoughts of them; he 
would chide himself for bothering about other people’s 
affairs. Yet he continued to call. 

One Saturday, as he passed by their home, he casually 
dropped in. His knock at the door was answered by 
Minnie, who was at home alone. She had been lying 
on the lounge reading Silas Marner, so absorbed and 
rapt that she had to bring herself back as from another 
world, and was still dazed when she faced him at the 
door, and stared unknowingly. Then, in slight embar- 
rassment, putting her hands up to her tumbling hair, she 
smiled and asked him in. Abraham, who swiftly took in 
that no one else was at home, said he wouldn’t stay. “Ah, 
do,” pleaded Minnie. 

“I’ve been reading Silas Marner” she said, after 
they were seated, “and I was so absorbed — I felt all con- 
fused when the bell rang.” 

He smiled pleased approval of her reading. 

“Have you read Silas Marner , too?” 

“Oh, yes.” 

“Did you like it?” 

“It is one of the purest gems of fiction.” 

Though Minnie did not quite grasp the meaning of his 
pedantic reply, she was happy nevertheless to have some- 
one to talk to about things other than hat-bands — about 
something that really interested her. She plied him with 
a multitude of questions. 

Whom did he like best, George Eliot, Dickens or 
Thackeray? What reading was required at college? 
Here she sighed. Would she ever find time to read so 
much? Did Latin become easier or harder as you went 
on? She was just beginning Caesar ; it was terribly hard. 


204 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


It would come easier? That was good. Did one ever 
learn to read Latin as easily as English? What course 
was he taking? Science? What did he expect to be- 
come? A teacher! Minnie looked at him, half smiling, 
and meeting an answering smile, wondered whether he 
remembered her childish proviso. She couldn’t tell. She 
dropped her eyes. 

All her further questions concerned his personal expe- 
riences and ambitions. She received his confidences with 
the absorption of one drinking from a fount of wisdom ; 
and the subtle flattery of her manner gave him extreme 
pleasure. His heart swelled with pride and he flushed. 

That evening he found it impossible to concentrate on 
his studies. Pictures of Minnie blotted out the printed 
page. The quiet and the Sabbath cleanliness of the home 
had added an impressiveness to her personality. Her 
girlhood somehow seemed to have been vivified. She dis- 
turbed his peace of mind. For days he went about pen- 
sive, silent, struggling. Finally, one night, after an ear- 
nest debate with himself, the student won out. His 
marks would suffer from such distractions — he would 
never, never see Minnie again. 

Abie’s renewal of friendship with the Mendels had 
caused Mrs. Ratkin many a restless night upon her hair 
mattress. Such things had been known to happen — child- 
hood friends married. Abie ought to look higher. He 
himself had told her the family still quarreled. How 
profoundly she hoped it would not happen ! It would be 
such a come-down — Henry Street all over again. When 
Abraham seemed to have stopped calling she felt like 
one reborn. But she would make quite certain — and she 
would know the reason why as well. 

'They are very nice children,” (she had visited them 


BANDS 


205 


once) “why don’t you go?” she asked, cleverly hitting 
upon the one ruse that was sure to draw her son out. 
She watched him closely. He dropped his eyes. 

“I don’t like them, they quarrel,” he said with a surge 
of irritation, eager to evade talk on the subject. 

Mrs. Ratkin was grateful and happy. It is ever thus 
with the mothers of men when the Minnies begin their 
shadow-dance. 

* * * * * * 

Minnie, busy with her lessons and the bands, gave no 
serious thought to Abraham’s sudden neglect. But the 
others made conjectures. 

“Did you ask him again?” they inquired of Jacob. 

Yes, he had, but Abraham had so persistently refused 
that he had ceased to ask him. 

“It’s because every time he came there was a fight,” 
Beckie was sure. One blamed the other. 

To Sarah the end of Abraham’s visits marked the end 
of a period of self-torture. He had seemed to point a 
steady finger of warning. When Mrs. Ratkin had come 
to pay her single visit, Sarah was roused to such a vivid 
consciousness of the torrent of nasty criticism that would 
flow round her were she to defy the conventions set for 
respectable motherhood that she cast aside the thought 
of remarriage, yet held on, as it were, by one finger. 
Then, when weeks passed with no reminder from the 
outside world to dog her, she once more breathed 
freely. 

XLIV 

“You are!” cried Minnie, in whose heart and memory 
her father lived ever sacred. 

The mother faced her children, pale and quivering, 


206 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


yet with an outward show of self-confidence and dignity. 
Sfie had just informed them that she would soon bring 
the regular visitor, upon whom they had looked as only 
“mama’s friend from Europe,” to take their father’s 
place in the home. 

Jacob, at once, saw a home full of “new” children. 
He shuddered, turned color, rose from his chair, threw 
his mother an inquiring glance as if unable to compre- 
hend her boldness, and scampered out of the house. He 
hated to confront complications, he hated controversies, 
he hated neighbors. 

Sarah refrained from evincing resentment. Her heart 
demanded that her children kiss her, congratulate her, 
be glad that she might at last get her measure of happi- 
ness. But in a minor key her heart also cried: “They 
are only children, they do not understand anything ex- 
cept what concerns themselves. 

“Yes, children,” she said, in a low, unsteady voice, re- 
peating what she had rehearsed over and over again, “I 
am a woman, alone. I have worked hard for you. I 
am getting older. You are getting older. You will go 
your own way soon. I will be left alone. When you 
reach my age, you will understand.” Feeling self-control 
slipping from her, she swallowed hard. “I have known 
Leopold Pollack from girlhood — long before I knew your 
father. He will be good to you — treat you as his own 
children — if you will only be good — stop quarreling — and 
willingly help with the bands.” She gave way and broke 
into tears. 

As Minnie hesitated between the impulse to run to her 
mother and the impulse to run out of the house, her eyes 
lighted upon her father’s portrait. Her mother stood 


BANDS 


20 7 

before her a disloyal woman, unsacred. She rushed to 
the door and out of the house. 

Beckie and Ida, troubled by the cloud which had so 
unexpectedly descended upon them, silently gazed out of 
the window. 

Sarah left, and toward evening returned with Leo- 
pold. The hours traveled into the night, yet Leopold re- 
mained. The children met in corners, in the hall, on the 
stairs. They whispered, wondered, marvelled. They 
looked furtively at their mother, believing they must dis- 
cover something strange, something they had never seen 
in her before. Apparently she was the same, except that 
her eyes darted nervously now from the children to Leo- 
pold, now from Leopold to them. . 

At last Leopold called them to him. Speaking gently, 
he promised that their interest would be his concern ; he 
would be their father. Tears were in his eyes as he 
asked them to accept him. 

A solemn silence fell. The atmosphere held the grav- 
ity of gathering clouds. Sarah, and then the girls, began 
to weep. Jacob walked out of the room. 

* * * * * sje 

It was not Leopold Pollack’s intention to install him- 
self as the domineering autocrat in the Mendel home. 
On the contrary, he wanted to be a real father to the 
cHiIHren. They had been allowed to grow up like weeds, 
it was his opinion, and for their own good as well as the 
good of the household and the business he meant to 
teach them to be orderly, obedient, willing and well-be- 
haved. 

Leopold, as most people who do not understand chil- 
dren, forgot that his meditated improvements would have 
to be effected through the medium of young living mat- 


208 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


ter. As soon as the early self-consciousness wore off, he 
rolled up his shirt sleeves and launched upon his task of 
reconstruction. 

The children instantly sensed innovation and ruffled 
up their feathers. 

The work-room window was filthy, he remarked, re- 
moving the wire from the sill and glancing from one to 
the other, to gather which of the three children was the 
most docile. Fixing upon little Beckie, he asked her 
courteously to bring a pail of water, a clean cloth and 
seat herself on the sill, pull the window to her lap and 
wash the outside of the glass. Beckie gave her “big” 
sister Minnie a swift look of appeal. The little ten-year- 
old had never before 'been called upon to clean windows. 
She was, if anything, small for her age; her feet, when 
she sat out, would reach only a little below the sill. 

Minnie flushed, dropped her eyes and told Leopold 
there was danger in Beckie’s sitting out, she herself would 
wash the window. Leopold tried to conceal his annoy- 
ance at this interference. Nonsense, Beckie was not too 
small ; Minnie would see that Beckie could do it ; he would 
hold on to her skirt from the inside; it was well for 
Beckie to learn to clean windows; some day she would 
be a married lady. Beckie smiled. Minnie frowned. 
Married lady ! Beckie was still a baby. Minnie had al- 
ways encouraged the child to depend upon her for a moth- 
er’s care, because their mother was always busy. She 
turned her back on Leopold while Beckie fetched the 
pail of water and cloth and sat out to wash the window. 
Contrary to his promise, Leopold did not hold on to her 
skirt. Minnie waited a moment or two, then rose from 
counting bands, went over to Beckie and stood clutching 
her. When the task was done, the child looked heated 


BANDS 


209 


and tired. Minnie herself washed the inside of the win- 
dow. Leopold was exasperated, though he said nothing. 
He conceived a slight dislike for Minnie. Out of his 
pent-up feelings burst a brusque order to Beckie to settle 
herself at sewing. The child started and turned hastily 
to obey. Minnie’s color heightened with a pang of pity 
for Beckie and resentment against the stepfather. This 
man, she meditated, evidently expected to “carry on” 
that way always. Her spirit rose in revolt. She would 
see to it that he dropped his “bossing.” 

Minor irritations arose constantly. Minnie’s mutinous 
spirit found almost daily fuel to feed on, while the two 
younger children became more and more intimidated and 
were kept in a constant nervous tremor. It got so that 
Minnie bore a positive antipathy toward this man who 
dared to order them around; she hated his “matter-of- 
fact” way; his obliviousness of Beckie’s youth riled her. 
He had “nerve” to exact a definite output from Beckie! 
Anything Beckie accomplished was commendable. If 
their mama insisted, that was different. But he! Why, 
Beckie was a kid — a baby. Anyway, what had he to 
say ? He was not a boss ! It was their mama's business. 
They had worked the business up without him. He ought 
to “mind his own affairs.” 

On complaining to her mother, Minnie was vastly as- 
tonished that Sarah defended the man. Her mother 
must be going crazy. 

Minnie solicited sympathetic indignation from Jacob. 
But Jacob, who was too busy with his college work to be 
intimately concerned with these work-room squabbles, re- 
ceived her confidences at first in silence, then with pro- 
tests that she was to “let him alone.” In his secret heart, 
however, the boy resented both Leopold and his mother. 


210 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


How had his mother dared to marry now when her chil- 
dren were all grown up ! Ugh ! 

As time passed Leopold assumed the more familiar 
right to improve the girls’ manners as well. They must 
lower their voices, be civil to each other. Beckie and 
Ida submitted, retreating to corners, from which they 
emerged red-eyed and whispering fretfully, but stopping 
short if ever there was danger of Leopold’s overhear- 
ing. 

“Why don’t you talk?” Of what are you afraid?” 
Minnie would shout to rouse a spirit of defiance in them. 
She could have kicked Leopold, spat on him, dug her 
nails into him. Her whole nature, apparently, was chang- 
ing from timidity to aggressiveness. 

Sarah made mute appeals to Minnie to control herself, 
while she turned pleading eyes on Leopold. When Leo- 
pold was out of hearing, she would order Minnie to learn 
to hold her tongue ; when the children were out of hear- 
ing, she would implore Leopold to change his tactics. 
Each resisted. Indeed Minnie would not let him boss 
them, she wouldn't. She hated him. Leopold, in turn, 
gave Sarah a bitter dose to swallow by telling her she 
had raised wild animals ; small wonder he was having 
the devil’s own time of it. If the dose failed in its cura- 
tive effect, he would charge her with abetting the chil- 
dren into defying him, and hinted that under such cir- 
cumstances there was no use for him to try any longer 
to bring order out of the chaos; he might as well quit. 
That would throw poor Sarah into a panic. If Leopold 
were to desert her she would be exposed to public ridi- 
cule — to unendurable shame. The thought would bring 
the goose-flesh to her skin ; and in this state she would 
pounce on Minnie, abusively insist upon her behaving 


BANDS 


211 


properly, threaten that her step-father “would throw her 
out of the house,” and declare he would be justified in 
doing so ; while at the same time her heart would writhe 
in agony as she watched the pallor spread over her 
daughter’s face and heard her unnaturally shrill shrieks. 
Her mother, Minnie would charge, cared nothing about 
the children. She, in a conspiracy with “that man,” 
wanted to drive them all out of the house. Leopold was a 
lazy fellow who had come to “sponge” on them because he 
could not make a living for himself. She would rather die 
than permit him to overwork little Beckie or frighten the 
life out of Ida, who trembled when she heard his foot- 
steps. If she, their mother, did not care, she, their sister, 
did. 

At these charges against her motherhood, Sarah’s blood 
would boil. Minnie, she would shout in a rage, was a 
wild, wild animal — took the liberties of a brazen hussy — 
belonged by rights to the sort of mother who sent her 
children out to work in sweat-shops to support their 
mother. Minnie didn’t deserve a mother who slaved to 
let her go to high school. . . . Then the unbearable sight 
of her daughter’s greenish pallor would drive Sarah out 
of the room, apparently hissing anger, while Minnie 
would hurl after her: “I don’t have to work in a shop; 
I know how to read and write, and I’m not dumb or dull. 
If you think you’re threatening me, you can be sure 
you’re not; this house is a regular hell.” 

During one such quarrel Minnie went into hysterics. 
Sarah, terrified, ran to her, implored her to control her- 
self. Minnie, from actual aversion, pushed her away, 
shrieking that she should go to “that man”; her feelings 
for her children were not genuine. 

For some time thereafter mother and daughter scarcely 


212 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


exchanged a word. Minnie went about constantly watch- 
ing for any show of “meanness,” and Sarah brooded mis- 
erably. Then came a big order for bands. 

3 ****** 

The work-room hummed with activity. Beckie had 
been running the machine until her back ached. In 
choosing her last batch of bands, she deliberately dis- 
criminated against those which were cut from the poor 
grade of buckram because they had “lumps” and “bumps” 
and were hard to sew. Leopold, noticing her selection, 
snatched them away from her and demanded roughly : 
“Don’t you know we must use up the damaged buck- 
ram?” Beckie threw Minnie a swift, imploring look. 
“I won’t let her do it!” burst upon Minnie’s mind. Her 
heart began to hammer. She seized the bands Leopold 
had substituted and handed the better ones back to 
Beckie. Her chest heaving, she stood defying Leopold 
and her mother with her eyes. Sarah frowned menac- 
ingly. Beckie, frightened, put down the better bands 
and picked up the others which Minnie, in turn, tore 
away from her, ready to hurl an insult at her sister, 
when she observed the child’s pallor and the alarm in 
her eyes. Poor little Beckie! She was scared! For a 
moment Minnie was held by a surge of pity. Then it 
occurred to her that they were all scared — that Jacob 
was a shirker, always dodging issues. 

“Beckie!” she cried threateningly, and tried to force 
the better bands upon her. 

Sarah stepped hastily forward, snatched the bands 
away from Minnie and cried in a low voice : 

“You are a busybody — an ungrateful, unwilling child. 
You don’t appreciate your uncle who does his best for 
you.” 


BANDS 


213 

“Sit down and work!” Leopold shouted at Beckie si- 
multaneously. 

His shout sent a spasm of resentment through the 
mother’s heart, yet she turned to Minnie and cried with 
equal roughness: “You sit down, too!” 

“I won’t!” Minnie shrieked, on the verge of hysterics, 
her heart thumping. She could have strangled both her 
mother and Leopold. “And I won’t let Beckie hurt her 
hands either.” She tore the bands away from Beckie 
again and, holding them up to Leopold, cried: “You’re 
a husky man, you work on these bands.” And with that 
she hurled them at him. 

Leopold showed that the girl had gone too far. 

Sarah, terrified, divided one swift look between the 
two. Her heart cried in anguish : “God, what will be the 
end of it all !” 

“She ought to be thrown out of the house,” raged 
Leopold. “She ought to have to knock around in sweat- 
shops like thousands of other girls !” 

She work in a shop ! Minnie’s heart flamed with con- 
tempt and indignation. It was the ugliest, bitterest in- 
sult. Only ignorant foreign girls worked in shops. She, 
a high-school girl, who aspired to a college education, 
whom Sarah herself had picked out to be a doctor, a law- 
yer, she to work in a shop! 

“Shut up!” she hissed at Leopold. 

He raised a hand to strike her, but dropped it, aghast, 
suddenly realizing the extreme pass to which things had 
come. He had never foreseen such dire consequences 
from his innocent measures of reform. Sarah’s ashen 
face, as she stood in the middle of the room wringing her 
hands, Minnie’s shrill shouting, Beckie’s tearfulness, 
struck tragedy into his heart. 


2I 4 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie shouted: “Don't you dare to ” wildly in- 

censed at his intention to strike her and almost more 
wildly incensed that her mother stood by “complacently.” 
“I hate you! You’re a mean man. I hate you!’’, she 
yelled. “I won’t stay here any longer. You can stay 
with your wife, and you can both work the children to 
death like slaves to swell your bank account. That’s 
what you want. I hate you — both of you !” 

With a furious look, she grabbed up her hat and school 
books and tore out of the house. 

XLV 

A dark, heavy silence fell upon Sarah and Leopold 
when the door closed on Minnie. With a swift look at 
each other, they turned and left the room, Sarah going 
into the parlor where she collapsed in a chair, and Leo- 
pold going into the bedroom where he stayed a few mo- 
ments puttering around. Now and then he glanced sur- 
reptitiously into the parlor at Sarah’s dejected figure. 
Soon he returned to the work-room. At the end of a 
half-hour he could bear his restrained excitement no 
longer; he picked up his hat and was about to go out. 

“Where are you going?” called Sarah, starting up, full 
of misgivings. 

“Out,” he said, avoiding her eyes. This announce- 
ment of the obvious angered Sarah. She turned her head 
away, flushed, and muttered under her breath: “Go! All 
of you!” 

He went. 

She sat down again and stared with unseeing eyes 
through the window, while her mind went round in a 
whirl. Such a daughter as she had brought up, such a 


BANDS 


215 


daughter! Let her go— let her stay away! As if she 
had any place to go to, as if she had the spunk to shift 
for herself ! Was ever a mother so cursed with such a 
stubborn, wilful child? Not even this would teach her 
a lesson. She would come home still of the same obsti- 
nate spirit. Forever they would continue — these fights — 
these discouraging, these disgusting scenes as if they 
were a low, Polish set. . . . Sarah heaved a deep 
sigh. . . . What had she done to deserve such a fate? 
In the great world other women married, too, but the 
stepfathers and children got along, and the homes were 
nice, quiet, pleasant. Never had she known peace — not 
as a wife — not as a mother. “If only she would stay 
away it would really be a solution.” The thought, hardly 
framed, filled Sarah with shame, like a virgin who has 
allowed herself to think unchastely. 

She rose and began to stir around the house, fol- 
lowed by the shadow of her conflicting feelings. She 
wondered where Leopold could have gone, when he 
would return, and whether the two would come back at 
the same time. “If Minnie,” she thought, “would come 
later or sooner, it would be better.” Every now and 
then a panicky feeling that, if Minnie did carry out her 
threat, people would condemn her, call her a bad mother, 
beset her heart ; but she lulled herself with the assurance 
that the girl had no other refuge. . . . “Always it has 
been Minnie. All the quarrels — all the worry — all the 
ugliness of the family relationship from time immemorial 
— she caused. Always, even as a child, from the time 
when I sent her to Mira for the band, she has stood out 
obstinately opposed to everything I have done.” Sarah’s 
heart was resentful, but her heart also ached for her 
child. 


2l6 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


She looked at the clock. Leopold had been gone two 
hours already. She was seized by a nervous fear that 
he might not come back at all. 

Supper preparations were completed. She set the 
table, then went back to the parlor window. Ten min- 
utes later Leopold opened the door. Little did he know 
what relief stirred in Sarah’s soul. 

During supper no mention was made of Minnie, though 
the eyes of each frequently traveled to the door. After 
supper the family sat round in an unsettled state, and as 
the evening wore on and no Minnie appeared, their eyes 
mutely questioned one another ; their faces fell into 
troubled lines ; all listened eagerly for footsteps in the 
hall. Leopold, unable to bear the sight of Sarah’s 
anguish, went to bed. 

At ten o’clock Beckie and Ida followed his example. 
Jacob sat up until midnight ostensibly studying. Then 
he, too, retired. 

Sarah began to pace up and down the room, wringing 
her hands and muttering lamentations. At two o’clock in 
the morning Leopold appeared on the threshold and 
urged her to go to bed. 

“Go away!” she cried. He went. 

At the first break of dawn Sarah leaned out of the 
front window. One moment she was frantic with con- 
cern for Minnie, the next moment she was frantic against 
Minnie. The chords of her heart played a double tune, 
but she listened mostly to the mother-string. When her 
family rose early in the morning, they found her worn 
and wan, an object of misery. 

Days passed, and still no Minnie. Sometimes, when 
Sarah was overcome with fear that something awful 
might have happened to her, she would entertain plans 


BANDS 


2i 7 


for locating her — going to the police station, or advertis- 
ing in the newspaper. But dread of the publicity in- 
volved in such steps would hold her back. In her di- 
lemma she would resent the girl's conduct as outrageous, 
unheard of, deserving of any evil reward and would pity 
herself that she who had worked her fingers to callous 
flesh and sweated and bled for her children, should be 
treated so by her oldest daughter. In this frame of mind* 
she would grow quite indifferent to Minnie ; but, ashamed 
of her indifference, afraid the others would perceive it, 
she would give exaggerated outward manifestations of 
grief, going about mute and glum and taking every occa- 
sion to throw harsh words at Leopold. The children, 
distressed on her account, would encourage her by 
prophesying Minnie’s return, if not that day, then the 
next. “Go away,” Sarah would shout at them, “you 
do not care a bit about your sister.” 

When Jacob, however, who at first manifested his in- 
dignation at Leopold by maintaining silence, burst out 
one day charging him with a rascal’s success and also 
picked up and left, Sarah was shaken down to her nor- 
mal self. Her conduct, she perceived clearly, had re- 
sulted in a fresh calamity. She became at once more 
talkative and cheerful, and showed Leopold wifely at- 
tentions. Oddly enough, from now on she began to 
worry about her daughter undividedly. She went to 
Wadleigh High School and the Queen’s Daughters in 
the hope of discovering her whereabouts. Minnie had 
ceased to attend both places. Sarah came back home with 
a haunted heart. 





















I 






< 




























\ 


BOOK II 
MINNIE 


« 








PART I 

INDEPENDENCE 








































*' 




- 












PART I 


INDEPENDENCE 

The night of Sarah’s vigil Minnie spent, in a home on 
Rivington Street, the home of two Dakowsky sisters, one 
of whom, Dora, she had met at the Queen’s Daughters. 
She knew they kept boarders in their five-room flat and 
had a stepmother ; both of which considerations impelled 
her to go there, as they would probably have room for 
her and also — with a stepparent of their own — sympathy. 
She was right. Dora did proffer sympathy and a third 
of the bed that she and her sister shared — provided the 
stepmother did not object. 

The worn, wrinkled little woman consented only after 
a good deal of persuading by Dora, who, eager to glad- 
den her friend’s heart, ran back to the bedroom, where 
she had left Minnie and where they had sat deploring 
the cruelty of stepparents. According to Mrs. Dakow- 
sky’s dictates, the rental of the one- third of bed was to 
be one dollar a month; breakfast, of coffee, a roll and 
cheese or smoked salmon, was to be five cents ; luncheons 
she would not provide because she helped her husband 
in his butcher shop; and supper, of good soup, meat, 
pickle and bread, was to be fifteen cents, except on Fri- 
days, when the price was twenty-five cents because of a 
more elaborate menu. 

In detailing this price-list Dora quite innocently raised 
up a mountain of anxiety in front of Minnie, who lis- 
223 


224 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


tened appalled. Dora did not know, and Minnie had 
forgotten, that she had no money. They looked at each 
other aghast and were about to drop into gloom when 
an idea struck Dora. She jumped up in excited glee, 
clapping her hands. The five men boarders had often 
expressed a desire for a competent person to teach them 
English. Minnie could teach them! That would solve 
Minnie's problem and theirs, too. Dora tingled with de- 
light. 

“What do they do?" Minnie asked. 

“Two of them are cloak operators, one a finisher, and 
Louis is a painter.” 

When the men were gathered about the kitchen table, 
Mrs. Dakowsky serving them with a “tub” of soup and 
a pan of meat, each of which she pronounced far too 
good for the Czar of Russia, Minnie and Dora, arms 
around each other's waists, entered as gracefully as debu- 
tantes in a ballroom. 

“Meet my friend Miss Mendel.” Dora did the hon- 
ors. “She's a high-school girl. She’ll teach you English. 
Now ain’t that lovely?” she ended emphatically, nodding 
her head in rhythm with her tone. 

The men were impressed. Before long they came to 
terms. The lessons were to be given in class form three 
times a week and were to cost fifteen cents a person per 
lesson. 

With the most careful economy, this income could 
not be stretched to meet a week’s needs. Minnie had to 
do without lunches. If hunger too inconsiderately thrust 
itself upon her at lunch time, she yielded and ruled out 
supper. This irregularity provoked Mrs. Dakowsky, who 
complained that by the time Minnie discovered her disin- 
clination for the evening meal she had already invested in 


INDEPENDENCE 


22 


the viands. It was agreed, therefore, that Minnie should 
be registered for a supper every other night and be per- 
mitted to partake of one-half of it at a time, the other 
half to be allowed storage room in the ice-box until the 
next night, when she would complete its consumption. A 
pesky arrangement ; but Mrs. Dakowsky knew how it 
was with the girl, and, not being a heartless woman, suf- 
fered it to continue, thinking privately that Minnie ought 
to throw up high school and go to work. She hoped 
Minnie would at least get additional pupils, so that she 
could settle down to a regular supper on each of God’s 
regular nights. 

Minnie earnestly hoped for the same ; her abstentions 
were doing her no special good either. She was getting 
to feel rather weak and shaky at the knees. She told 
Dora so, who said, innocently enough : “You can surely 
get work in a shop — why don’t you give up high school ?” 

A shop ! Minnie turned upon her with eyes glaring in- 
dignation. 

Dora, abashed, remembering Minnie’s experience with 
her stepfather, apologized. Of course she ought to have 
remembered that shop work was beneath Minnie. For a 
day or two, however, the relations between the two were 
strained. It was bad enough, Minnie felt, that she had 
been compelled to descend to the East Side again. But 
to have Dora, her friend, suggest a shop as a solution! 
Leopold was probably saying that she was already work- 
ing in a shop! 


n 


Two of Minnie’s pupils were of the sort who laugh 
loudest at coarse jokes and revel in suggestiveness. Louis 


226 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

the “paintner,” who was often caught gaping at the long, 
white neck of the teacher and looking with fascinated 
eyes at her slender white hand as it wrote the letters of 
the alphabet, was their special butt. They would pass 
remarks about him in audible whispers, break out into 
vulgar laughter, and, with knowing looks, dig each other 
in the ribs. 

Minnie, too young and inexperienced to ignore them, 
would, in her ingenuousness, inquire interestedly into 
the cause of their hilarity, and then find herself embar- 
rassed, blushing, stammering, stuttering, and utterly mis- 
erable. After a time she hit upon the happy idea of inti- 
mating that they were wasting their money in thus idling 
their time away, and this gave them pause. They brought 
their pencils to their mouths, and worked industriously 
the rest of the evening. After that, except on rare oc- 
casions, things went better ; it was only when the teacher 
was out of hearing that they teased “the paintner.” 

Louis’ roughness of manner was refreshing rather than 
offensive. He was loud-spoken, but mild-worded. He 
laughed thunderously, but with an accompanying embar- 
rassment that seemed to muffle the sound. He had the 
gentle consideration that is clumsy in the act but so sin- 
cere in expression that it evokes only appreciation. He 
was. big and burly, with hands always paint-smeared and 
clothes redolent and shining with the stuff of his trade. 

Minnie appealed to him by the law of opposites. Al- 
though under stress she had deteriorated into the aggres- 
sive and assertive Minnie that the stepfather knew, the 
real Minnie was gentle, low-voiced, mild-mannered and 
shy. 

Louis learned from the missus of the establishment 
how it happened that Minnie had come to live among 


INDEPENDENCE 


227 


them — a mean mother, for the sake of a strange man, 
had driven the girl out. He learned also of the reason 
for her absences from table at meal times. The latter 
knowledge gave him much concern. He had the sym- 
pathetic nature that feels with all suffering. If he met 
a crippled beggar on the street, he would be unhappy for 
days. There are some people like Louis still left in the 
world. He suggested to the other pupils that since they 
were so well satisfied they should increase the tuition 
fee to twenty-five cents. One of the basting-pullers did 
not take kindly to the idea. He clapped his hand on a 
bony knee and pursed his lips. 

“No sir! If she said fifteen cents, then it is fifteen 
cents. If she will raise the price herself, then she will 
raise the price, but we shouldn’t suggest it,” he said dis- 
agreeably. 

Louis then hit upon the scheme of retiring from the 
class and becoming a private “scholner.” 

It was obvious, however, that Louis’ small raise did 
not carry Minnie far, for she absented herself from meals 
just the same and looked even more pinched and pale. 
Then Louis secretly advised her to raise her rates. She 
deserved it, he told her emphatically. Minnie was em- 
barrassed and stammered something to the effect that the 
men were paying enough, and Louis felt compelled to 
drop the subject. 


Ill 

Minnie had just left her books in the office of the 
Wadleigh High School and was standing aimlessly in the 
vestibule, with that void in her heart, that agonized feel- 


228 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


ing of “what next?” which only the peace-loving who 
are condemned to be storm-tossed know. 

It was done, and now school was over forever. What 
would her mother say if she knew? What would "he” 
say? For the first time the anger in which she had left 
home and which had supported her during all the weeks, 
forsook her. The tears came instead, and she wondered 
whether her family had actually expected and wished 
her to stay away, whether they were really indifferent as 
to what became of her. Had they tried to find her? “I 
might just as well be dead as far as they are concerned. 
If any of them had disappeared, I would have searched 
High and low to find them.” 

Classes were dismissed, and girls began to pass in files 
through the vestibule. Minnie dried her eyes and stole 
out on to the street. She drew a deep breath as if to 
prepare herself to face a great, big world. The first 
thing she would do, she decided, would be to go from 
office to office of the doctors and lawyers in the vicinity 
of Rivington Street. In that neighborhood there was 
less danger of detection by anyone who knew her, and, 
Besides, she would save carfares. 

She had no luck that day. The doctors and lawyers 
all required some funny asset called "shorthand” and 
dismissed her peremptorily because of her ignorance of 
that pesky subject, as if her high-school education 
amounted to nothing and her excellent handwriting were 
a worthless trifle, when, as a matter of fact, it was the 
one thing that she felt safeguarded her against the com- 
pulsion to work in a shop. 

Fearful that her great disappointment might submerge 
her, she egged herself on to take comfort in the hope of 
better luck the next dav. 


INDEPENDENCE 


229 


In the evening, after the class of the Dakowsky board- 
ers and private instruction of Louis, she took him into 
her confidence. He, too, was of the mind that the sun 
would shine on the morrow. Her obvious anxiety so 
pained him that he managed between hems and haws to 
intimate that he would be ever so glad to lend her at 
least five dollars until matters mended themselves. She 
shrank from his offer as if it held indelible dishonor, 
thereby causing him great embarrassment. He puck- 
ered his forehead and examined his black-rimmed finger- 
nails like a sensitive boy. 

Early the next morning she started out breakfastless 
on another job-hunting expedition, with the same empty 
result. Nor did she have better success the following 
day, or the day after that. But the failure of her ef- 
forts only increased the fierceness of her determination : 
she was not Sarah’s daughter for nothing. 

One day she strayed by mistake into the office of a 
physician on whom she had already called. He had been 
busy with patients and had dismissed her peremptorily. 
Minnie, on opening the door, instantly perceived her er- 
ror, and drew back. 

“Oh, excuse me, Eve been here before.” 

The young man, who was not busy now, gave her a 
quizzical look and asked her to come in. 

Flushing with excitement and the anticipation of suc- 
cess, Minnie closed the door and stepped timidly yet 
eagerly forward. 

He drew a chair out. “Be seated,” he said, affecting 
the manner of an older man. Then he swung his swivel 
chair round to face his desk. After a pause, during 
which his eyes rested intently on a paper on which he 
was scribbling, he cleared his throat and spoke again. 


230 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“You were here before asking for work?” He went on 
scribbling. 

“Yes.” 

“Been asking other doctors for work?” 

“Yes.” 

Another pause ; then, turning from the paper suddenly, 
he flashed his eyes at her. 

“Look here, girlie,” he began, “you ought to be sitting 
on your mother’s lap instead of hunting work.” 

The advice came so unexpectedly and was such a 
damper on her eagerness, that Minnie could only stare 
at him, a feverish brilliancy in her great gray eyes. He 
looked into them as though he were searching for his 
own image in a looking-glass. Then he brought his lips 
together as though he were satisfied with what he had 
seen and turned to his desk again. Instantly, however, 
he faced about once more and regarded the girl with a 
superior, though faintly amused, smile round his lips and 
in his eyes. 

“Have you a mother?” 

She hesitated. She had a mother in the flesh, but not 
in the spirit. 

“No,” she replied. 

He was apparently interested. 

“A father?” 

“No.” 

“What have you been doing?” 

“I have been going to high school.” 

“When did you leave?” 

“Lately.” 

“Where do you live?” 

“With a friend — a girl friend.” 

The young man noted her addition, “a girl friend,” 


INDEPENDENCE 


231 


and regarded her steadfastly, as if to interpret her soul, 
wondering how much she knew. 

“Do you think,” he asked, assuming a grave air, “that 
it is very nice for a girl to go around from office to office 
looking for work?” He used the word “nice,” though 
he meant “safe.” 

Minnie looked uncomprehending. 

“Isn’t it nice? Is it like begging?” 

“No, oh, no,” he answered reassuringly, “not beg- 
ging ” He leaned forward in his chair, his breath 

beginning to come short. 

“Come, little girl,” he said in a lowered voice with a 
paternal note in it, “sit down on my knee, and I’ll tell 
you something you ought to know.” 

Minnie hesitated. He looked her straight in the eyes. 
Though her knowledge of sex propriety was limited and 
no one would have been more astonished than she to 
learn that there was any danger in doing what the doc- 
tor asked, her instinct told her that to sit on a man’s 
knee was somehow not right. 

“Uh, no,” she gasped, shrinking back in her chair. 

The doctor leaned back. He suspected that Minnie 
knew. He assumed again the manner of a busy 
man. 

“Well, step in again to-morrow,” he said brusquely. 
“Perhaps I will ask a friend whether he needs a girl in 
his office.” He turned in his chair and bent over his 
desk, pen in hand. 

Minnie rose, a sense of deep calamity possessing her. 
Had she lost an opportunity for work by refusing to sit 
on the doctor’s knee ? She could have bit oft* her tongue. 
Attempting to cover up her agitation, she said : 


232 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“I — I did not mean to — to insult you. I'm not ” 

her intuition suggested the right word — “afraid.” 

The young man manifested an electric interest. He 
lifted his eyes quickly and, seeing that the girl was quite 
serious, rose, placed his arm around her uncorseted 
waist, drew her, unresisting, to his chair, and seated her 
on his knee. 

“Well, now, that's a nice girl,” he said wheedlingly, as 
one entices a shy animal. He made an effort to control 
the trembling of his limbs. 

Minnie's heart was beating from an indefinable fear; 
and, somehow, she felt ashamed. 

The doctor silently ran his hand up and down her loins 
over her clothes, several times gently, then less gently, 
and finally pressed her to him ardently, his breath coming 
thick and short. 

Minnie was amazed at this, and her young face ex- 
pressed puzzled inquiry. Ashamed, the doctor loosened 
his hold and pretended to have the toothache. But the 
next moment he completely abandoned himself ; he 
crushed her to him with all his strength, fumbling at the 
same time with her skirts. 

A rap sounded. He released her with lightning rapid- 
ity. It was the janitor who came to know if the doctor 
had found the key he had lost. Yes, the doctor had found 
the key — the words were spoken with an effort and with 
suppressed annoyance. 

The interruption sent Minnie hurrying to the door. If 
only she could get out before the janitor was gone! A 
foreboding of evil was in her heart. She was so — so 
frightened! But before she reached the door, the doctor 
found time to say: “Wait, little girl,” and in the mean- 


INDEPENDENCE 


233 

time the janitor disappeared. The doctor stepped toward 
her. She stood clutching the door-knob. 

“Don’t be afraid,” he said softly, looking hard at her. 

She made no reply. 

“I didn’t hurt you,” he half asserted, half asked. 

Embarrassed and perplexed at her own alarm, she 
stood with her hand playing nervously with the door- 
knob, the tears gathering in her eyes. 

“No ” came from her, timidly. 

“Well, now, show me you are not afraid by coming 
to-morrow and I will give you all the money you need 
until you find work. Just to be a nice girl.” He swung 
his hands and raised his shoulders nonchalantly, at the 
same time scrutinizing her sharply. 

Minnie made no reply. 

“You’re not* afraid of me?” he half asked again. 

She turned large eyes up to him. He had convinced 
her. 

“No,” she replied naively, “why should I be?” 

He was greatly pleased. 

“Of course you’re not,” he assured her, and added in 
a low voice : “But don’t tell anybody what ” he hesi- 

tated. She looked questioningly at him — “that ” he 

hesitated again, then quickly went on: “Well, what we 
do together is nobody’s business” — his breath came thick 
again, his eyes grew cloudy — “and just don’t tell any- 
body. There, now, shake hands, and promise.” 

She held out her hand. 

“No, I won’t tell anybody,” she promised ; “it’s none of 
my business.” 

The doctor suppressed a chuckle. He shook her 
hand. 

“Well, now, come to-morrow and show me that you’re 


234 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


not afraid, and I’ll see what I can do for you.” He took 
her to the outer door. 

The words held a promise of work and Minnie felt, 
despite everything, hopeful. 

IV 

It was late in the afternoon. Minnie had made the 
rounds of almost all the remaining offices in the vicinity, 
and was reduced to the helplessness of one drowning. 
Would she have to go to a shop after all? Surely, there 
must be some office where her high-school education 
would stand her in good stead! There was the doctor. 
A voice within her, a weak one, to be sure, warned her 
not to approach him. Yet he might have a position for 
her. 

Between the fear of going to him and the impelling 
force of desperation, she turned toward his office as un- 
thinkingly as a bird in its seasonal migration. She sim- 
ply walked and found herself there. Half stupefied she 
entered. The doctor looked up from his desk. 

“Oh, so ! Come in and sit down.” He pushed a chair 
towards her, his tone and manner implying that he had 
found what he had been looking for. As soon as she 
was seated he began with assumed earnestness, “Well — 
now — I have spoken to my friend, but he already has an 
office girl. However, give me your name and ad- 
dress and if I hear of anything else, I will let you 
know.” 

“Mildred Mendel.” 

He wrote, repeating: 

“Mildred Mendel — a very nice sounding name. Where 
do you live?” 


INDEPENDENCE 


235 


“Rivington Street.” She gave the number. 

“You live with a friend, don’t you?” 

“Yes. Dora Dakowsky.” 

“D-a-k-o-w-s-k-y. Are you Russian?” 

“No, Pm German — that is, my mama speaks ” 

She halted and blushed. 

The doctor noticed her embarrassment, but deemed 
it best to make no comment. 

As he seemed to have no more questions to ask, Min- 
nie rose to go; and the doctor, assuming preoccupation, 
said : 

“Yes, I am very busy.” 

Minnie closed the door behind her and left the young 
man biting his fingernails. 

****** 

He had no position for her! She elbowed her way 
back to Rivington Street through the mad throng of peo- 
ple, each jostling the other in a fierce effort to arrive as 
quickly as possible at his destination. Her heart ached 
with a corroding sense of aloneness. Nothing seemed 
real. The incessant, dinning stir on the street had no 
relation to her ; these people seemed busy with happiness. 
Purgatory had spilled its contents upon her heart alone. 
All was hopeless — black for her. First the doctor told 
her to come every day and promised to give her all the 
money she needed until she found work ; now he seemed 
to have forgotten all about it. No, he hadn’t forgotten ; 
he just hadn’t meant what he said in the first place. 
She had been afraid of him because he had taken her on 
his knee. How foolish she had been. Why, he did not 
even remember that he had done so. He had forgotten 
her, like her mother, who didn’t give a snap of her fin- 
gers whether her child lived or died ; nor did her sisters. 


236 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


And her stepfather wanted her to die. She wanted to 
die herself. What was the use of living? 

It was an aged little woman of not much over fifteen 
who taught the Dakowsky boarders that night and, later, 
listened to the advice of Louis “the paintner” to try the 
“Help Wanted — Female” columns of the New York 
World. This she conscientiously did, but without results. 

Every road has a turning where the sun may be shin- 
ing. So it seemed to Minnie when the next morning she 
found a postcard in the letter-box addressed to her. 

“Hochgeschatztes Franlein” the card began, and went 
on to say that if she would come to the office of the doc- 
tor, she would learn something of interest to her. 

She ran to his office as if a brake had been lifted from 
off her being and left her no longer subject to her own 
volition. She arrived with cheeks flushed, and dark rings 
under her eyes, her lips blue. 

“Well, hello there!” the doctor greeted her as if she 
were an old pal. His cordiality only emphasized her 
loneliness. The tears rushed to her eyes; the floor 
seemed to rise and sink. She wanted to cling to him and 
beg him never to desert her, to tell him she was afraid of 
life. But she only dropped silently into the chair he 
offered. 

“Well, that’s a nice girl ” 

She burst out crying. 

Sincerely astonished and affected, the doctor leaned 
forward and touched her gently on the knee. 

“What’s the matter, little girl ?” The tenderness of his 
voice only made her weep the more. Raising her from 
the chair, he took her on his knee, removed her hat, 
stroked her hair, kissed her, petted her, called her a 
“sweet girl,” “a nice child.” 


INDEPENDENCE 


2 37 


‘Til give you money,” he said tenderly. “Will five 
dollars help you? You haven’t had enough to eat in 
weeks.” He felt her fleshless hips and ribs to confirm the 
truth of his observation. In a moment, however, he set 
her on her feet and, forcing a five-dollar bill in her hand, 
dismissed her, bidding her, as if against his will, to come 
again at the same hour the next day. 

She came the next day and the next and the next. It 
seemed as if he would never tire of holding her on his 
knee, now pressing her tight, now releasing her, then 
kissing and pinching her as if to nip off a piece of flesh 
to keep. Minnie could not understand it at all. But, 
since nothing happened to her, she grew less afraid, and 
was all the more satisfied when on asking for office work 
he told her that what she was doing was what he re- 
quired. He paid her fifty cents a day and kept her only 
a short time. It solved the problem of her living. She 
even grew happy. 

But some instinct warned her not to mention her visits 
to the Dakowsky household. The increase in her in- 
come she attributed to a new “scholar”; which produced 
general pleasure, especially as she appeared at table for 
both supper and breakfast. 

But the sun must go down even after a new rising. 
One day the doctor wanted to know how tall she was. 
A good method was the comparative one, standing back 
to back, then front to front before a long looking-glass. 
But this was not accurate enough for the man of science ; 
a better way, he thought, was to lie down on the couch, 
each in turn, and let the other mark head and foot in 
pencil. Minnie entered vivaciously into the suggestion 
like a child into an interesting game. But when she lay 
stretched out on the couch and he suddenly took her in 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


238 

his arms and smothered her with fierce kisses so that 
she felt her breath leaving her, she screamed. The doc- 
tor released her in disgust. 

Like a mouse stealing back to its hiding, she slunk out 
on the street and ran and ran until she reached Riving- 
ton Street. 

V 

She would have to tell somebody, or else something in 
her head would snap. Wherever she turned, the doctor’s 
blazing eyes stared at her like two ghosts, and in the still- 
ness she heard his labored breathing. Suddenly, without 
warning, someone would take her in great big arms and 
press the breath out of her. She was afraid of noises, 
she was afraid of the quiet. She started when spoken 
to, and in the silence heard her own thoughts uttered out 
loud, and was terrified lest someone hear them. 

The following evening, while giving Louis his lesson, 
she most unexpectedly burst into tears and with the 
frankness of the innocent and guileless told him every- 
thing. She made one intimate confession after another, 
wholly unconscious that the man she was talking to was 
as much of a stranger to her as the doctor. 

Louis could not credit his ears. He was simply amazed 
at such naivete in these days of precociousness. He told 
her, trying to keep his tone dispassionate, that she had 
done right to scream and run away and must never again 
go to the doctor, or to any man who might treat her like 
that. 

Her intuitions thus borne out, she felt relieved and yet, 
somehow, more frightened. 

Louis’ eyes thereafter followed her gestures with a 


INDEPENDENCE 


239 


look in them that had not been there before. Her con- 
fession had suddenly made him more alive to her physi- 
cal presence, and also awoke in him a sense of proprietor- 
ship, which led him from now on to invite her to go out 
-walking and to question her freely, as though he had a 
right to know, all about her family and personal affairs. 
She refused to say where her famliy lived. He insisted 
that the confidence was due him, even commanded her 
dictatorially to tell ; but Minnie, afraid he might divulge 
her stress to her people, successfully held out against him. 

The money difficulty rose again like a monster now 
that the income from the doctor was curtailed. Louis, 
as they were out walking one evening, insisted that she 
take money from him. She refused. Near the tenement, 
he drew a five-dollar bill from his pocket and thrust it 
down the bosom of her dress. In the contact he experi- 
enced an exquisite sense of desire. He hurried her into 
the hall and up the stairs, keeping several paces behind 
and discouraging her attempts to face about and return 
the money. 

Every night for a week they took walks, ostensibly for 
her to have a chance to communicate her day’s experi- 
ences to Louis, whom she would tell of her attempts and 
failures with the disconsolateness of a child. When the 
prospects for office employment seemed very dull, Louis 
suggested work in a shop. “It will do temporarily,” he 
said. “Something else may turn up later.” Minnie gave 
him a queer look. But what had become of her resent- 
ment? 

They were passing a vacant lot, which was opposite 
the Mendel home and to which Minnie had led Louis 
every night. She fancied that if a light shone through 
the window, all was well with those at home. If there 


240 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


was no light, she tortured herself and spent a restless 
night. This evening there was no light, so that gloomy 
misgivings mingled with her distress over her own situ- 
ation, and she walked beside Louis, brooding. Was any- 
one sick? Was anyone hurt? Was Beckie all right? 
Poor little Beckie, how hard she worked 1 And Ida, too. 
How well the children could use a little more money 
than their mother allowed them. She, Minnie, might be 
the provider of that little more money if she took work 
in a shop. . . . Her soul had found its straw and clung 
to it. She began to form rosy visions of herself as the 
good Samaritan. . . . But soon an ugly voice hooted — 
“A shop! A shop!” She shuddered. Her blasted ca- 
reer! A heaviness settled upon her young heart. She 
had aspired to a college education and a profession. She 
saw now that life was hard and fate defrauding. 

Louis wondered at her silence and her tearful- 
ness. 

“I hope he dies!” she suddenly muttered, gritting her 
teeth. 

“What did you say?” Louis asked. 

“I hope my stepfather dies!” she said, then fell again 
into stubborn silence. 

Sometimes Louis the “paintner” could not make Min- 
nie out. She might be suspected of having “state se- 
crets.” She was a queer girl. 

VI 

One morning Louis awoke with a headache. Emerg- 
ing from the front room, which he shared with another 
boarder, to make the railroad-car trip through the flat 
to the kitchen for his breakfast, he passed through the 


INDEPENDENCE 


241 


room adjoining occupied by the girls. Dora and her sister 
were up, but Minnie still lay asleep, her bare arms raised 
over her head, her long hair strewn over both shoulders, 
her lips slightly parted. An expression of candor and in- 
nocence made her face lovely in repose. Louis hurried on 
through the next room occupied by two more boarders, 
through Mr. and Mrs. Dakowsky’s bedroom, to the 
kitchen, where the fifth boarder slept. 

After breakfast all the boarders except Louis left for 
work ; he lingered, divided between the inclination to 
give the day to nursing his not very severe headache and 
the inclination to disregard it and go to work. The 
tempter won. He remained at home. Then Louis was 
torn by two conflicting hopes, that the missus would leave 
to help her husband in the butcher shop and that she 
would not leave. 

When he reached Minnie's room on his way back to 
bed, she had turned to one side, and her white neck and 
chest were exposed. Slipping into his own room hastily, 
he shut the door tight and lay down. Soon he was 
asleep. 

Minnie awoke at half-past seven. She put on the 
barest amount of clothing, and hastened out for a copy 
of the New York World. Mrs. Dakowsky left at the 
same time for the butcher shop. “Put a shawl over your 
head ; it's raining,” she said. Minnie disregarded her ad- 
vice, as there was a news-stand close by. But this news- 
stand had already sold all its copies of the World, and 
she had to go a long block to and fro in the rain, and 
came back drenched. 

Standing before the looking-glass in the bedroom, she 
removed her outer clothes and let down her hair to 
dry. Suddenly the door of the front room opened, and 




SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


the reflection of Louis appeared in the glass. She gasped. 
He shut the door hastily. Rummaging nervously for a 
dry blouse in a box on the floor, which contained her 
worldly possessions, she put it on quickly, pinned her hair 
up, and hurried out of the room into the kitchen, where 
she spread the newspaper on the table and tried to fix 
her attention upon the help-wanted columns. 

If only it weren’t raining, she reflected, she would go 
right out so as not to have to meet Louis again. She 
was sure he had seen her, and she was sure he shouldn’t 
have seen her with her waist off. But maybe he hadn’t 
seen her, maybe he had shut the door so excitedly because 
she had screamed. Oh, it made her sick — everything had 
to happen to her. . . . But he was only Louis the “paint- 
ner”; it didn’t matter. Yet she was not convinced that 
it did not matter. 

Louis, in shirt sleeves, soon appeared in the kitchen. 
He said good morning gruffly, with averted eyes, and 
went straight to the sink to wash himself. Her eyes 
followed him to the front room, to which he returned 
for the towel he had forgotten. He remained behind the 
closed door about five minutes, then reappeared in the 
kitchen. 

Minnie, her heart palpitating, summoned up enough 
self-possession to inquire how he came to be at home. 
He explained, still avoiding her eyes. As there was a 
purplish flush on his large face and deep rings under his 
eyes, Minnie concluded that he had a “splitting head- 
ache,” the only kind, according to her notions, that jus- 
tified one in staying away from work. She grew sympa- 
thetic. 

“I wish I could do something for you,” she said, though 
it was hard for her to speak because Louis seemed greatly 


INDEPENDENCE 


243 

constrained and acted as if he preferred not to have to 
look at her. 

“You could rub my forehead, or kiss it,” he suggested, 
smiling. “Kiss” recalled the doctor and Louis’ own ad- 
vice. Louis observed her change color and to reassure 
her, added jokingly: “That’s what they do for children — 
kiss them where it hurts.” She dropped her eyes, and 
for a while there was silence. “What are you doing?” 
he asked, moving closer to the table, though wishing he 
could keep away. He fumbled with an edge of the news- 
paper. “It’s too rainy to-day for you to go out. Stay 
right home,” he said. She looked out of the window. 
The rain was coming down in sheets. He moved still 
closer and leaned over the newspaper. “Let’s see,” he 
said, “what kind of a teacher you are by the way I can 
read the paper.” He read laboriously, stumbling over 
the “ths” until Minnie, tired of repeating corrections, 
tore the paper away from him and told him, laughingly, 
to “stop bothering” her. Louis flushed, and in his turn 
snatched the paper away from her. They laughed into 
each other’s eyes. Minnie grabbed for the paper. Louis, 
holding it out of her reach, got up from his chair and 
let a surreptitious, covetous glance sweep over the grace- 
ful lines of her young figure. He dangled the paper just 
out of her reach, and they wrestled and laughed, until 
suddenly, to her amazement, Minnie felt herself. enfolded 
in the mighty arms of Louis, who stifled her with kisses 
and murmured breathlessly : 

“I love you — I love you — I love ” 

She struggled like an animal in a trap, twisting and 
turning in his embrace and hitting out at random — here 
— there — with her fists, against his shoulders, his chin, 
his ear, his neck, his mouth, and finally, without knowing 


244 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


what she was doing, giving him a blow in the eye. At 
shock of the pain he loosened his hold, and she wrenched 
herself free and rushed from the house. 


VII 

She dashed pellmell up one street and down another, 
tears of terror choking her. The whole world seemed 
traitor and all strangers hateful, and in the eyes of all 
she saw evil design lurking. She was gripped by a fren- 
zied desire to see her sisters — her mother! anyone not a 
hard cruel stranger. Like one gone mad she ran to the 
school that Ida and Beckie attended and stationed her- 
self in a vestibule of a house opposite from where she 
breathlessly watched the school exits. In the violence of 
her fright and in the face of greater disloyalty her fam- 
ily loomed up as loyalty incarnate. One’s own, one’s 
own! How hateful strangers were! 

Three long' hours passed, and still she stood waiting. 
A whole day seemed to be going by. By the time the 
lunch gong sounded, her eyes were fairly popping from 
her head. At last the gates opened, and children began 
to emerge. Minnie craned .her neck and fairly devoured 
each child form with her gaze. Finally the right one 
flashed upon her. 

“Beckie! Beckie!” she called wildly. 

At the sound of her name Beckie looked around in be- 
wilderment. The moment seemed endless to Minnie. 
Then Beckie’s eyes lighted upon her sister waving her 
hand frantically, and she darted across the street into 
her arms. 


INDEPENDENCE 


245 


“Where are you all the time?” There was the baby- 
ish plaintiveness in her voice that Minnie loved. She 
stroked Beckie’s hair and pressed her cheek against hers 
passionately murmuring tender nothings. 

“Mama is looking for you all the time, and she 
cries ” said Beckie. 

So her mother had been worrying about her after all? 
Minnie felt a brief glow of satisfaction, instantly dissi- 
pated by regret that her mother, too, had suffered. 

“Does mama look for me?” she asked. 

“She did ; she don’t no more,” said Beckie, who sensed 
Minnie’s pain and meant to spare her. 

Minnie’s heart sank. She had been gone so long, she 
reflected bitterly, that her absence no longer mattered. 
Tears for herself hung on her eyelids. 

“How is Jacob?” she brought out presently. 

“He left the house for good. He’s by Uncle David.” 
Uncle David was the sympathetic relative who had be- 
friended the family in past years. 

The news fairly staggered Minnie and convinced her 
that their mother zvas no longer a mother; she cared for 
no one but Leopold. A sickening sense of utter de- 
sertion seized the girl. 

“How does Uncle Leopold treat you?” 

Beckie rolled her eyes to express contempt and com- 
plaint. 

“He’s a regular foreman. I hate him.*’ 

“Goodness,” Minnie cried, “so he still makes you work 
too hard ?” 

Beckie nodded her head. 

“I’ve accomplished nothing by going away !” cut sharp 
as a dagger through Minnie’s consciousness. 


246 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

“There's Ida,” cried Beckie, spying her sister. “Ida! 
Ida!” she called. 

Ida, though as surprised as Beckie had been to see 
Minnie, crossed the street leisurely. She had made up 
her mind long ago that if by any chance she met her run- 
away sister she would ignore her. 

“Beckie,” she said, with her eyes studiously turned 
away from Minnie, “come home to dinner. It’s late 
already.” 

Minnie stepped toward her. 

“Ida, aren’t you glad to see me?” 

“No,” Ida cried, “you abused mama and ran away to 
have it easy and we got to do your work, too.” 

It had never occurred to Minnie that such an interpre- 
tation could be put upon her conduct. She was struck 
dumb. 

Ida took hold of Beckie’s hand to pull her away. 

“I — thought — he would be better to you ” Minnie 

at last managed to say, hardly conscious that she was 
speaking. 

“Better ? We got to do your work now, too. Better !” 
Ida was vastly contemptuous. “Come on,” she cried, 
jerking at Beckie. 

Minnie recovered some of her self-possession. 

“Go on, Beckie dear,” she said huskily, “you’ll be late 
for dinner.” Through the tears in her eyes the two girls 
were merged into one, in the shape of Louis. 

Beckie, lingering with Minnie, cried : 

“I want to stay by you.” 

“No, ” Minnie could say no more. 

Ida forced Beckie down the steps. 

“You’ll hurt her!” Minnie called. 


INDEPENDENCE 


247 

“Yeh, and if she has to do your zuork, it don't hurt 
her ?” 

Minnie looked down on Ida with something in her 
eyes that compelled attention. 

“You mustn't say that, Ida,” she said, “I took your 
part — it's wrong ” 

“Highfalutin talk ! Crazy, high-tone lady !” inter- 
rupted Ida. “Come on, Beckie !” Beckie threw Minnie a 
kiss and called : “Come to see me soon again.” Minnie 
nodded her head. She watched the small, retreating fig- 
ures with a leaden heart. When they were out of sight, 
a bleak sense of utter aloneness overpowered her. With 
heavy steps, drearily, getting drenched to the skin, she 
retraced her steps to the Rivington Street tenement, 
where her space on the Dakowsky pillow was paid for. 


VIII 

Sarah's heart gave one great leap of relief when Ida 
and Beckie brought their news. 

Minnie had even behaved like a “high-tone lady” and 
had said “highfalutin” things, Ida told her. Sure signs 
of normality. How happy the mother felt, what balm 
came to her heart! She laughed and wiped tears from 
her eyes. 

But had Ida or Beckie got her address? No? How 
had it not occurred to them to get it? Such childish 
forgetfulness! However, Minnie was alive and well. 
Nothing else mattered much. They would probably see 
her again. Then they must not fail to get her address. 

Once more the sky looked blue to Sarah. It was pos- 
sible to shed tears of gratitude as a change from tears of 


248 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


grief. Her happiness showed in kindness to the children 
and deference to Leopold. When she visited Jacob, she 
took him into her confidence upon this matter and that 
with an eagerness as if he were a newly discovered pal. 

IX 

Left alone, Louis, in terrible remorse, restlessly paced 
up and down the length of the railroad flat. The heavy 
flesh of his face had fallen into massive wrinkles, and his 
small eyes, glistening with unshed tears, seemed even 
smaller. Burly Louis, so innately gentle that he would 
not have hurt the meanest thing, had mortally oflfended 
his “teacherin !” He bit his lips in mortification and 
wished he could live the last few hours over again. 
Finally the creak of his heavy boots on the bare floors 
irritated his nerves, and he seated himself on a chair in 
the kitchen and chewed his black-rimmed finger-nails, 
as he gazed hard at a bit of dark sky visible from the 
tenement window. The childlike face of frightened Min- 
nie haunted him ; he was full of shame, was disgusted 
with himself, particularly when he recalled the warning 
he had given her against the doctor. And his helpless- 
ness to undo his evil deed, to set himself right again in 
her eyes, filled him with anguish. 

Passing his big paint-smeared hand across his eyes to 
dry them, he rose and went out of the house. In the 
ground-floor hall he drew out his bluish-white handker- 
chief and wiped his eyes again, then, hiding his hands in 
his pockets out of disgust with the sight of his own flesh, 
he went to the front door and glanced up and down the 
street. No Minnie to be seen. After a long vigil he w'ent 
in search of her, looking into doorways and up and down 


INDEPENDENCE 


249 


cross streets. The rain penetrated his light-weight suit, 
and after he had gone a number of blocks he returned to 
his room and stationed himself at the window to watch 
for each passerby. After another long vigil, he went 
downstairs again. At last, from the vestibule, he saw 
Minnie returning slowly, her wet clothes clinging to her 
slight frame. His heart began a nervous turmoil and he 
wondered what he ought to do, whether to let her see him 
or to hide. He hid behind the stairs. 

Minnie lingered at the curb in front of the house, 
afraid to go in. The rain came down in torrents. Fi- 
nally, with a convulsive shudder, she went into the vesti- 
bule and leaned wearily against the side wall. She stood 
so still for so long a time that Louis peeped warily from 
out of his hiding-place to assure himself that she was 
there. He rubbed his large hands in and out of each 
other ; the lines of his face deepened with loathing of 
himself and the instinct that had betrayed his better self. 

A fierce gust swept the vestibule. Minnie drew hastily 
into the hall. In the suddenness of her movement, a 
dizziness that she had felt before but only faintly, came 
upon her with force. She groaned, staggered to the 
stairs, and sank down. 

“What’s the matter?” Louis cried, rushing from his 
hiding-place and bending over her. 

His voice came from a great distance — it was not real 
— all reality merged in a black blur. Louis shook Min- 
nie with trembling hands. She came to in a few mo- 
ments and looked up at him. Her deathly pallor agonized 
him. He gathered her up in his arms and carried her to 
the flat, where he placed her on the lounge, rubbed her 
with vinegar and dashed cold water in her face. When 
she came to, she drew away from him in alarm. 


250 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Don’t be afraid,” he pleaded, with such earnestness 
and such an honest shining of his eyes that her wits 
played her false, and she wondered whether she had 
dreamed the morning’s incident. Then Ida was the one 
who was saying: “Don’t be afraid.” Louis’ burly self 
seemed to be in her sister’s guise. “Don’t be afraid,” 
Ida kept saying. 

Louis used a quantity of vinegar that would have over- 
come a dozen faints. He got ice from the ice-box and 
applied it with masculine awkwardness to her temples ; 
and when she was recovered, he helped her to her frac- 
tion of a bed, where, left alone, too tired, too sick to 
think, she fell into a heavy sleep. 


X 

At the supper table, to prevent suspicion of their 
strained relationship, Louis was, for him, garrulous. Had 
anyone else, he asked, observed what a pretty young lady 
they had with them ? When had she applied the paint ? — 
a reference to Minnie’s flushed cheeks. He winked at 
hdr out of sheer awkwardness and caused general amuse- 
ment. Did they all notice how silent she could be when 
she had nothing to say, and was there greater wisdom 
than that? 

When she happened to look up at him, he turned his 
eyes away quickly, with a pained expression. 

After supper he invited her, as usual, to take a walk 
with him, brushing aside her hesitation in the dictatorial 
way he had assumed. 

“Go on, go, get your hat,” he said, touching her on the 
elbow. 


INDEPENDENCE 


251 


Mrs. Dakowsky, looking on, wished it was Dora that 
was Louis “the partner's” favorite. 

On the street Louis at once communicated to Minnie 
a plan at which he had arrived while she was sleeping off 
her indisposition and he was keeping strictly in the 
kitchen, careful not to pass through her room even for a 
badly needed handkerchief. She ought to move from the 
Dakowskys’, was his verdict ; sleeping with two others in 
a small bed in a small room was no life. This eating 
once and skipping twice was nothing short of lunacy. 
She should live with friends of his on Madison Street, 
who had no other boarders and only one child and would 
treat her well. 

While he was giving this altruistic advice, a voice 
within said : “You yourself should go away. By a pre- 
tended favor to her you are removing temptation from 
yourself. Strangers are strangers all over. For no 
money Mrs. Argush will be no better than Mrs. Dakow- 
sky. Sleeping in the kitchen of a two-room tenement is 
as bad as one-third of a bed in a bedroom. But Louis 
rooted this sentimentality out of his mind. Since he and 
Minnie could not stay under the same roof without dan- 
ger to both of them, the one to move might as well be 
the younger person, to whom a change did not mean so 
great a hardship. 

To Minnie — perverse is human nature — the wretched 
Dakowsky habitation when about to be denied her rose 
desirable as a palace and as hard to part from as life it- 
self. She turned pale and quivered. To go again to a 
strange home loomed up as a horror and she repented, 
oh, so earnestly, anything she might have done to pro- 
voke Louis into taking such a stringent measure for her 
punishment. 


252 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


She turned a mournful, pinched face up to him, mak- 
ing a heart-rending sight, from which he had to avert his 
eyes. With mingled emotions he guided her, neverthe- 
less, against a raw, biting wind, to Madison Street, where 
he stopped in front of a closed shop. “You had better 
stand in the doorway,” he said, “safe from the wind. I 
will go to see if my friends are still up. It is after ten 
o'clock and they may just be in bed.” She was too 
choked to assent or dissent ; and when he returned pres- 
ently with the information that the Argushes were up 
and she was accepted as a boarder, she hung her head 
and followed him dumbly. 

A familiar aspect of the vestibule roused her from her 
lethargy. She hung back from Louis, her heart beating 
rapidly, and tried to make out the blurred numbers on 
the door. There could be no mistaking them — they were 
worn, but the same — it was The House of the Schlopo - 
borsky Cellar! She clapped her hand to her eyes and 
screamed. Louis faced round quickly. 

“What's the matter? Does anything hurt you?” 

She was alarmed into docility. 

“Nothing — nothing hurts me.” Louis was relieved. 
“The wind is blowing hard,” he said and, taking her by 
the elbow, led her in. 


XI 

Most of her bag and baggage being on her person and 
Louis undertaking to explain to the Dakowsky missus, 
there was no reason, all agreed, why Minnie should not 
remain with the Argushes that very night. 

Louis had prepared the good Argushes to meet a girl 


INDEPENDENCE 


253 


“smart like anything,” but as Minnie’s monosyllabic re- 
plies hardly bore out his boast, he felt obliged to explain. 
“Wait,” he said, “till she sleeps herself out. You will 
see, she is as smart as I say.” Minnie lowered her eyes 
as he smiled upon her. Mr. Argush, spitting out threads 
of tobacco from the end of his cigarette and scattering 
the smoke, laughed a merry laugh, his face wrinkling and 
dimpling. In Louis’ protectiveness of Minnie he saw 
the huge joke of matrimonial intent. 

Minnie yawned. Mr. Argush pulled out his big gold 
watch by its heavy gold chain and held it up to Louis. 
If Minnie, he said, was to have the chance to “sleep her- 
self out” into her greater “smartness,” Louis had better 
let her go to bed; whereupon Louis, in preparation for 
departure, spat out the remnant of his cigarette into the 
sink. On the way to the door he smuggled a five-dollar 
bill into Mrs. Argush’s hand and asked her in a whis- 
per to insist upon Minnie’s eating. He left, urging Min- 
nie to feel at home. 

After a moment of stiff silence — the moment of read- 
justment — Mrs. Argush proposed that she and her hus- 
band immediately remove from under the bed in the bed- 
room the cot upon which Minnie was to sleep in the 
room-of-all-affairs. She lighted a candle and held it for 
him while he, on his knees, proceeded to shove aside 
one obstructing article after another. Mrs. Argush’s 
chiding of him for making too much noise — she was 
afraid the baby in the crib would be awakened — made 
Minnie quiver with the agony of a sensitive intruder. 
At last the cot was extricated from the tangle under the 
bed. Mr. Argush, scrambling up, called his wife’s at- 
tention to the melted grease trickling down her apron 
from the lighted candle, and whisked her under the chin. 


254 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Mrs. Argush blew out the candle, put it away in a closet 
over the sink, and the two energetically proceeded to 
push the table and the chairs to one side to make room 
for the cot. 

Minnie, hovering rather than sitting on her chair, was 
tortured as to whether or not she should help ; she might 
only be in the way if she did; and if she didn’t, they 
might think she was unwilling. Each moment her sen- 
sitiveness heightened, for they were having difficulty 
with the cot; the legs at one end set up, the legs at 
the other end shut down. At last it was adjusted and 
the perspiring Mr. Argush and his spouse turned to go 
to the bedroom, he to disrobe, she to weed out spare 
bedding for Minnie. 

They had scarcely reached the threshold of the other 
room when the cot crumpled up with a bang. With a 
resigned sigh they turned back. 

“Oh, it’s going to be a big bother to you !” cried Min- 
nie, who had started from her seat in the keenest dis- 
tress. 

For a moment — a moment of torture to Minnie — they 
were too preoccupied to reply. Then they cried in duet 
with great sincerity: “No, no!” 

“Nu, sure it’s no bother. What kind of a bother?” 
added Mr. Argush. “Does the cot ask for food? Does 
the landlord want extra rent? Is this room not wholly 
to spare?” He raised his laughing eyes to Minnie; she 
was set at rest. Mr. and Mrs. Argush were not yet pos- 
sessors of so much as to feel that they had nothing to 
spare. 

The cot once more planted on its four legs, Mr. Ar- 
gush tested it with his full weight. Satisfied it was now 
secure, Mrs. Argush brought bedding; and with a kind 


INDEPENDENCE 


255 

good-night to Minnie, husband and wife retired to their 
six-feet square of privacy. 

* * * * * * 

Nothing but the flooring under her feet separated 
Minnie from the Schlopoborsky cellar! She marveled 
at this with youthful intensity. If her mother only knew ! 
Oh, goodness, what in the world was going to happen 
to her next ! Louis had had no right to bring her here. 
But he did not know it was the house of the Schlopo- 
borsky cellar. Why hadn't she told him? Why could 
she make a hullabaloo when others were concerned and 
always remained dumb for herself? 

As she raised her hand to turn out the gas-light, her 
burning eyes were caught by a bright calendar on which 
a gaudy, bare-bosomed young woman advertised Neces- 
sity Biscuits of the Titanic Biscuit Company; and after 
she had gone to bed the vision danced before her in the 
dark in brilliant shades of red and yellow until she fell 
into a doze, from which she awoke in a few min- 
utes with a start, tearing herself from the arms of Louis 
and straining her neck to keep her lips out of reach of 
his fierce kisses. She lay awake for some time, so ner- 
vous that she dared not turn on her bed. Then she fell 
asleep again, and wrestled throughout the night with 
Necessity Biscuits, brazen, bare-bosomed women, Louis, 
cots tumbling from great heights to great depths, a cold 
stove in a gray cellar, home, mother, Ida, bands, high 
school. 


XII 


She awoke early in the morning and lay quietly in 
bed while recollections of the previous day and night 


256 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

filtered through her mind, faint, at first, blurred, unreal, 
then with greater vividness, until her brain was entirely 
cleared of her troubled sleep and the reality, hard and 
bitter, thrust itself upon her. She could no longer teach 
the Dakowsky boarders; consequently she would have 
no source of income; so what in the world was to be- 
come of her? She stared blankly into space, her whole 
being enveloped in a cloud. All seemed utterly hope- 
less, and she utterly helpless. From sheer impotence she 
turned from side to side upon the cot. Again her eyes 
fell upon the brazen, bare-bosomed lady of the Titanic 
Biscuit Company calendar. She studied it mechanically. 
In the lower left-hand corner was the picture of a huge 
plant; in the lower right-hand corner, of an office with 
girls bending over desks. An unconscious something 
kept her eyes riveted on the right-hand corner. An in- 
spiration dived through her mind. She would try to get 

a position in that office ! ‘Til get right up ” But she 

was afraid of rousing the Argushes. Then came a coun- 
ter-fear ; the Argushes might insist upon her eating 
breakfast even though she had no money to pay for it; 
and, determined to avoid this, she jumped up and began 
to dress. Just as she was ready to leave, Mrs. Argush, 
in her night regalia of a torn waist and a skimpy petti- 
coat, appeared upon the threshold between the two rooms. 

“What are you doing up so early?” she whispered, 
stepping farther into the room-of-all-affairs. 

Minnie timidly imparted her intentions. 

“But it’s too early, it's only six o’clock.” 

Even if it was too early to go out, she had somehow 
to escape consumption of a breakfast without pay. 

“Maybe it’s not so early,” she replied nervously, mov- 
ing toward the door. 


INDEPENDENCE 


257 


The baby stirred. Mrs. Argush turned to listen. Min- 
nie slipped out, and was already at the hall door when 
Mrs. Argush discovered her flight and called in astonish- 
ment : 

“You haven’t eaten any breakfast.” 

There ! What a satisfaction to have escaped ! 

“I don’t want breakfast. Good-by!” 

Mrs. Argush remained staring at the closed door. 

“A meen mudner mensch !” (a queer person) she mut- 
tered, and returned to her spouse and baby, puzzled by 
Louis’ choice. 

Outdoors a fresh breeze was blowing. The streets 
wore an air of Sabbath cleanliness, and to the early hour 
was due a peaceful quiet. Here and there an energetic 
housewife appeared in a doorway with a can of ashes or 
rubbish to deposit in a barrel, and here and there a toiler 
in a “busy season” trade emerged to go to work. Scared 
by the silence and the gray light, Minnie walked cau- 
tiously, as if to avoid drawing attention to herself. The 
sight of a policeman swinging his club to the whistled 
tune of Annie Laurie, reminded her that she needed to 
be directed to the Titanic Biscuit Company. The big 
man’s eyes twinkled down on the timid little questioner. 

“Je fall out of bed?” 

The joke missed Minnie, who, completely possessed by 
this new possibility of obtaining office work, was in no 
mood for fun. 

The factory was at the extreme West Side of the 
metropolis, and by the time Minnie reached the place, her 
excitement, mounting with each step she took, had risen 
to fever heat. 

A timid knocking on his office door roused the super- 


258 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


intendent of the Titanic Biscuit Company. He turned 
his heavy body on the revolving-chair and called : “Come 
in.” Minnie started back at the sight of the man facing 
her. His chin and lower jaw, protruding like a slightly 
open drawer, gave him the ferocious aspect of the pro- 
verbial villain. “Come in, come in,” he growled, rubbing 
a rheumatic leg, which that morning had serious designs 
against the serenity of his temper. She advanced into the 
room and stood like a sinner on Judgment Day before 
this Almighty. “Well, what do you want?” he growled 
again. That mean leg would get the better of him and 
inject gruffness into his voice though he meant to be 
pleasant to the timid child. 

“Work — work in your office.” 

“Got any experience?” 

“No, sir.” 

He seemed to measure the impertinence of her request 
for work in an office against her youthful body, which 
shrank under his gaze. Shenvas ready to run, to cry out 
when she was startled by a sharp sound. The gentle- 
man had rung a bell. She looked to the right and to the 
left for a means of escape from the policeman summoned 
to throw her out. She trembled from head to foot. 

“We have no position for you in the office, we can 
give you work in the factory. Experience not needed. 
Satisfied?” 

Minnie, not knowing what she did, nodded. 

The door opened. A man of immense size, with sleeves 
rolled up displaying tremendous muscles, appeared. 

“Charlie,” the Almighty grunted, “take this girl to the 
icing department.” He turned to Minnie. “You’ll get 
three dollars and a half a week,” he tossed out, and swung 
his chair around again to his desk. 


INDEPENDENCE 


259 


Simultaneously Charlie asked her to step along with 
him ; she felt as if she were being spun round like a top ; 
and before she realized what was happening the immense 
man was leading her through a huge iron gate, which 
made her shudder with a sense of her insignificance. He 
sped on through a hallway and up six flights of stone 
stairs. Minnie, trying to keep pace, reached the top 
sick with breathlessness. 

“Dying?” Charlie, amused, turned round to in- 
quire. 

Tears welled up in her averted eyes. She said noth- 
ing. 

Charlie slapped his pockets one after another, then 
slapped them all over again, and seemed upset about 
something. The sight of Pern, the keyman, who hap- 
pened to pass at that moment, relieved him. 

“Say, Pern,” he called, “give’s a key.” 

Pern took a key from his pocket. With a suggestive 
smile he held Minnie stripped before the gaze of Charlie 
as he dangled the key in the air. Then he threw it, aim- 
ing at Charlie’s head. Both men laughed as Charlie 
caught the key and called “son-of-a-gun” to the retreat- 
ing Pern. Minnie dropped her eyes and recoiled as 
though a foul smell had reached her. 

Shrinkingly she followed Charlie to a time-clock. Pre- 
tending he had to help her reach the crank, he held her 
up under the armpits. As soon as she could, she freed 
herself from his hold. 

“You must do that every morning. You’re docked a 
cent a minute for being late, so git here on time, or the 
boss’ll be making wages on you. See?” He chuckled 
and pursed his lips as if to spit. Minnie giving no sign 


26 o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


of appreciation of his joke, he decided she was a “stiff” 
and made no further advances. He always tested every 
good-looking newcomer. This kid's eyes kind a fetched 
him. 

Charlie led her to Mr. Camely, the foreman of the 
icing department, who turned her over to the forelady. 
The forelady placed her at a table to arrange biscuits in 
straight rows on large boards, the boards to be mounted 
on racks, the racks to be pushed to a far end of the 
huge loft. 

Minnie listened to the forelady’s instructions with the 
solemnity with which an earnest bride listens to her wed- 
ding sermon. She was awe-inspired by the lady’s dig- 
nity, and, at the same time, so distracted by the agoniz- 
ing realization that the place was a shop that she had to 
strain every nerve to keep her mind from wandering. 
A haggard child’s face was turned up to the forelady. 

“The girls are not allowed to loiter in the water-closet,” 
the dignified forelady continued, “and you mustn’t talk or 
sit down, or you’ll get the sack.” 

“When should I come in?” Minnie, gulping, asked 
timidly. 

“At seven. You get a half-hour for dinner, and at six 
o’clock the whistle blows.” 

Subdued noises reached the forelady’s ear. She 
turned like a dog catching a scent. An Italian workman, 
amusing himself and those around him by a hummed ren- 
dition of II Trovatore, instantly feigned intensive con- 
centration upon his task of sticking rectangular cakes 
dipped in colored icings on to iron spikes. Another man, 
who was about to yield to temptation and sit down to 
ease his burning feet, raised himself swiftly and bent 


INDEPENDENCE 


261 

over his work with exaggerated attention. A solemn 
silence fell upon the half of the loft that the forelady 
faced. Smugly conscious of her power, the forelady 
stood still a few moments, then turned to instal order 
in the other half of the loft. Instantly the mouths of 
several girls shut automatically, one upon a whispered 
tale of a “feller” who behind a rack had behaved like a 
“fresh thing,” thus proving that he did not know a “lady 
of high ability” when he met one ; another, upon the ear- 
nest information that “rats” could be bought at the five- 
and-ten-cent store for the latter sum as good as any “what 
swells pay forty-nine cents for in them department 
stores.” Minnie herself was frightened out of a gaze of 
awe upon her opposite neighbor, a young woman whose 
top was decked with a bird’s nest of ultra-blond curls 
and whose cheeks and lips stood out in vivid scarlet on 
either side of a flour-white nose. 

The forelady for a minute or two watched the new 
“hand” laying crackers in rows, then walked slowly 
along, taking note of wooden and paper boxes strewn 
about carelessly. She would see to their removal ; also 
to the washing of the windows, which were badly bespat- 
tered, and to the leaking of the big sink. The huge rub- 
ber mat underneath was swimming in a pool of water, 
and the girls who worked near the sink were getting wet 
feet. 

Minnie’s eyes followed the departing forelady. A 
shop with a forelady and a foreman and everything ! O 
God ! She lowered her head to hide her distress from her 
neighbor. And Louis would tell Dora ! Even Uncle Leo- 
pold might hear of her disgrace. She burned with hu- 
miliation. To think that his threat had come true! 


262 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Maybe he had cursed her! She hated him — hated Dora 
— hated being alive. If her mother had had any love 
for her children, she would never have married again. 
She cared for herself and “that man” only. She hated 
her mother. The tears rolled down her cheeks and 
dropped on to the board. 

“Say, sissy, them crackers sell dry,” said Minnie’s co- 
worker. 

Some who heard giggled. Minnie flushed and pro- 
ceeded to lay crackers with greater speed. 

In a far end of the loft a machine was set in motion. 
It sent forth a few shrill notes as of ecstasy, and came 
to a halt with an immense groan. The suddenness of it 
startled Minnie and added to her misery. She felt like 
screaming, like tearing the young flesh from her body. 
Envious thoughts ravaged her soul of the girls she had 
left behind at high school. Why had she been picked out 
for this — for working in a shop — the meanest fate 
of all ! 

Neighbors at adjoining tables began to hum a senti- 
mental tune : I wonder zvhere yon are to-night , my love. 
The notes wound themselves around Minnie’s heart like 
a shroud. 

The place buzzed with sounds of activity. The very 
air seemed to go round and round and round. Beads of 
perspiration stood out on foreheads, rings deepened 
under eyes, time seemed endless, minutes to be hours. 

Then a shrill shriek exhausting itself automatically put 
out the life of drudgery. A crank seemed to have been 
turned off in the mechanism of the people. Men, women, 
boys and girls dropped a curtain of restraint and rushed 
pellmell to one side. In a single minute a human sheet 


INDEPENDENCE 263 

was formed, which, for its denseness, could make no 
progress forward. 

“Got the pip?” a young fellow, cupping his hands at 
his mouth, hallooed. Girls giggled. Boys moved closer 
to them. 

A bony old woman, gaping at Minnie, elbowed her 
way up to her. She blinked her watery blue eyes. 

“Gotche dinner, sissy?” she asked in a hoarse, coarse 
voice. Minnie edged away. The woman peered at Min- 
nie’s hands for her lunch parcel. “Go on up there,” she 

piped, pointing to a rear door. “Ye kin git pie ” 

The woman didn’t seem real to Minnie, who heard the 
instruction as in a nightmare. She didn’t move. The 
woman drew still closer, as if to impart a great secret, 
and laid her bony hand, smeared with a brown, sticky 
substance, on Minnie’s arm. A man eager to pass pushed 
by them. His shirt was wet with perspiration ; his per- 
son exuded a sour sweat smell. Minnie gagged with 
nausea. “Ain’t you heard what I been saying?” the old 
woman whispered in her hoarse voice. 

Minnie turned red-rimmed eyes upon her. It was all 
so utterly strange! Was it a shop? Where was she? 
She was filled with terror. The old woman might have 
been a witch out of a fairy tale, all the others, wild ani- 
mals in an arena. Mad with a desire to escape, she 
rushed to the door that the old woman had indicated and 
out into a dark hallway, where she sank down on the top 
step of the flight of stone stairs and buried her head in 
her hands. 

“It’s a shop — it’s a shop — it’s really a shop!” She 
swayed back and forth. She was too wretched for 
tears. 

Time passed ; another shrill whistle announced the ex- 


264 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


piration of the lunch hour. With bent head Minnie 
joined the throng of lighter-hearted ones returning to 
their tables of toil. 


XIII 

Two months later Minnie was still in the employ of 
the Titanic Biscuit Company and still living with the 
Argushes. She had capitulated. But her capitulation 
was not the result of resignation or surrender. She was 
merely too numb to resist. Circumstances had dealt her 
a stupefying blow. Like an automaton she went daily to 
the factory and returned to the tenement house of the 
horrible past. 

At first her fellow- workers of the same sex construed 
her apathy as queerness. When they learned she had 
been a high-school girl, however, and that this was her 
first job, they labelled her a “stiff,” after which they 
faithfully ignored her. Never was she invited to join 
them in their frolics, nor to eat lunch with them on the 
stone stairs, one of the factory’s commodious lunch 
rooms. As for the men, they never asked her to make 
“dates,” nor even gave her a friendly poke in the 
ribs. 

Minnie was as little alive to her social ostracism as to 
everything else about her. Indeed, she would have found 
it far more unnatural had her companionship been sought. 
The people in the factory passed to and fro, stood be- 
side, behind and before her like phantoms. Her world 
was not real. She was stunned, benumbed. 

She felt secure about Dora and her family for she 
had elicited from Louis the promise that he would not 
tell her friend and she avoided meeting Ida and Beckie 


INDEPENDENCE 26 5 

again; and nothing else came to prick her out of her 
torpidity. 

That stare into a distant world in the great gray eyes 
of Minnie attracted Mr. Camely, the foreman. He would 
watch her with amusement as she worked or sat alone, 
or arrived alone in the morning or left alone at night. 
Either, he thought, she was quite different from the oth- 
ers, or she was putting on airs. He would find out. 

Once he addressed her as she stood at work. Did she 
think the row she had made was straight? She flushed 
as she raised her eyes to his. 

“I — I think so.” 

Mr. Cameley kept her troubled eyes raised a moment 
longer, then, smiling, gave her a friendly whisk under the 
chin and turned away. The thing was unheard of ! With 
a great whirr the wheels of gossip were set revolving 
among the Maggies and the Susies. “That stiff,” they 
determined, was not to be left in the smug consciousness 
that she was “good enough for the foreman.” To ignore 
her was not enough ; she must be squelched with disdain ; 
so they passed her by like haughty queens, drawing in 
their social skirts and holding high their heads. 

Mr. Camely followed up the one attention with others. 
Occasionally he stopped at Minnie’s table to lay a few 
crackers in a row and asked her if she didn’t think he 
did better work than she — just for a look into her up- 
turned eyes, which somehow undermined his foreman’s 
dignity. 

Minnie, who felt she was being singled out for par- 
ticular inspection of her work, lived in dread of the 
“sack.” The shop now had become the alternative to 
starving, and so every time Mr. Camely approached she 
trembled. 


266 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“She’s so dead stuck on him, she’s fidgety,” her op- 
posite neighbor communicated to the other girls. 

Once when Mr. Camely was in an especially good 
mood, he called to Minnie as she was passing his office 
and ordered her, with affected gruffness, to come in. 
As she stood timidly facing him, he had to drop his smil- 
ing eyes ; he took boyish pleasure in his power. 

“You mustn’t eat so many crackers,” he said with as- 
sumed forbiddingness. 

Minnie was dumfounded. She raised astonished eyes 
in which Mr. Camely revelled. 

“Be careful,” he teased, “don’t go too far.” 

Out of his presence Minnie found words of self-de- 
fense and was miserable that she had not told him he 
was accusing her wrongly. For days she harbored a 
wretched sense of injustice and resolved that at the very 
first opportunity she would explain to Mr. Camely; but 
when the chance came, she fell into an uncontrollable 
tremble and said nothing. She remained a thief in the 
foreman’s eyes ! How she loathed her palpitating heart, 
her roof-rooted tongue. 

Again, some days later, Mr. Camely summoned Min- 
nie to his office. 

“What’s that lump in your stocking ?” He ordered her 
to pull down her stocking, pretending that he expected to 
find nuts or crackers. What he found was her week’s 
wages tied in a handkerchief. 

This time Mr. Camely got no amusement from the look 
in Minnie’s eyes. He laughed a chopped laugh, pinched 
her cheek, called her “pretty,” and hurried her out of 
the room. 

The end of the week brought a fifty-cent raise in her 
wages — with numerous consequences. 


INDEPENDENCE 


267 

For one thing, it set Minnie's heart at rest as to the 
possibility of being sacked. A very thirsty man will be 
grateful for muddy water. Then it permitted the ex- 
travagance of breakfasts. Three dollars and fifty cents 
a week, for all the elasticity of the poor man's dollar, 
simply would not cover all of Minnie's needs. Breakfast 
had been, resignedly, a permanent elimination. In the 
third place it redeemed her with the Argushes in spite of 
her queer ways. After all, a girl who can get a fifty-cent 
raise at the end of only a few months must be “smart." 
And, lastly, it gave Louis the tremendous satisfaction of 
saying “I told you so" to the Argushes. He quite swelled 
with pride. 

XIV 

One Saturday midday, at closing hour, Mr. Camely, 
with the prospect of an empty afternoon and evening 
before him, sat yawning in his office. He was bored. 
Minnie, one of the last of the workers to leave the loft, 
passed by his open door, heard him snap his fingers, and 
glanced in. He beckoned to her to enter. He settled 
himself leisurely in his revolving-chair, lolling with parted 
legs like a man inviting a fascinating wife or mistress to 
sit on his knee. Minnie stood falteringly in the middle 
of the room. 

“Sit down." Mr. Camely pushed forward a chair. 

She sat down gingerly on the edge. A ray of sunshine 
lighted up her hair and gave it a reddish glint ; her gray 
eyes were soft and melancholy. The man's eyes traveled 
over her person lustily. 

“How’je like to go to a show to-night?" he asked with 
the same leisureliness in his tone as in his manner. 


268 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie stared at him. For the first time she observed 
that his features were those of an ordinary human being. 
He had always seemed to belong to a different species. 

A show ! Mr. Camely, the foreman, was asking her to 
a show ! She could not believe her ears. She had never 
in her life been to a show. Bells tinkled glad tunes in 
her head. But the music was short-lived. She looked 
down upon her faded waist and her sugar-smeared skirt. 

“I have no nice dress.” 

“Go home and change your dress.” 

“I have no home.” Every bit of her awe of the fore- 
man was gone. She could have taken him into her con- 
fidence about all her affairs. 

“Don’t you live somewhere ?” 

“But not at home ” 

Mr. Camely suddenly straightened up. His breath was 
labored and his eyes wore an odd stare, like the doctor’s. 
Minnie’s heart gave a violent leap. She cast a swift look 
toward the open door into the empty loft. 

“Come on — give’s a kiss,” cried Mr. Camely in a muf- 
fled voice, and leaned forward to take the kiss. 

Mortal terror struck into the girl’s heart. She jumped 
up, wrenched herself free from Mr. Camely’s detaining 
hold, and, the next instant, was out of his office, running 
madly down the six flights of stone stairs. 

XV 

She stood outside the huge factory panting for breath, 
in a torment of uncertainty. Had she done right to run 
away? Had she heard right? Had Mr. Camely asked 
her to let him kiss her? Had he wanted to do the same 
as the doctor? Were all men going to treat her that 


INDEPENDENCE 


269 

way ? Goodness, what could be the matter with them ! 
Maybe she should have let him kiss her, he was the fore- 
man. Now, maybe, she had lost her position. But 
maybe he had not noticed that she had run away; he 
might have thought she had just walked out to get a 
drink. 

Some instinct, however, exceeding her reason, told 
Minnie that she had done right to run away and, further- 
more, that she must not return to the shop. Cooperating 
with her instinct was Louis’ warning ; yet Louis had con- 
fused her by his own conduct. Round and round circled 
her impulses — to return immediately to the shop, to run 
home, to go back to the shop the next day, never to go 
back — while, independently of her will, her footsteps 
carried her rapidly homeward. She reached the tenement 
out of breath, pale, worn. 

Mrs. Argush was bending over a tin basin in which 
lay her young slice of heaven splashing in warm water. 

“What is it? Why do you look so sick?” the good- 
hearted woman exclaimed with exaggerated breathless- 
ness. Minnie made no answer and burst out crying 
when Mrs. Argush repeated the questions. In a flurry 
of alarm Mrs. Argush raised her infant out of the water 
in her arms, hastily threw a shawl over him, and led Min- 
nie into the bedroom. “Lie down,” she cried, “lie down.” 

While keeping watch over Minnie, Mrs. Argush 
dressed her baby and invented a thousand reasons for the 
girl’s crying spell. 

Minnie, on the other hand, was tortured by a new 
thought. Would the Argushes and Louis think she had 
been truthful about the raise? It was only a little over 
two weeks since she had got it. Who leaves a position 
so soon upon a raise? And again came the frightful 


270 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


uncertainty as to whether she ought or ought not to re- 
turn to work the next day, and whether she ought to have 
run away at all. 

Once or twice Mrs. Argush broke the silence to beg 
Minnie to relieve herself by saying what was the matter. 
The only response she received was a restless turning 
of the girl’s body and a fresh outburst of tears. Finally 
she went into the other room to put her baby to sleep. 
“Schluff mein faigele, mach zu deine aigelech,” she sang 
softly in a sweet contralto. 

The sound of voices roused Minnie. The bedroom, 
always dismal, was now pitch-dark. She must have been 
asleep a long time! She jumped up and hurried to the 
threshold, and asked what time it was, astonished to see 
Mr. Argush home. Mr. Argush, washing himself at the 
sink, looked out from a layer of soap lather and smiled. 

“Time for a young lady to be up,” he joked, in the 
hope of cheering her, Mrs. Argush having already told 
him of the state in which she had come home. 

During supper Minnie sat silently brooding. Sleep 
had not dispelled her unhappiness. 

After supper Mr. Argush said he was going to visit 
the Chemins. Mrs. Argush sent him a wink that meant 
he was to take Minnie along; the diversion, she felt, 
would do the girl good. Mr. Argush promptly extended 
the invitation and received a refusal. There was a bit 
of talk, and five minutes later Minnie, tearful, was fol- 
lowing Mr. Argush out of the house. 

On the street he teased her. Had she got another 
raise? Or was it a falling out with Louis, her sweet- 
heart that was depressing her? What then? Until poor 
Minnie, overwrought, felt herself grow faint. She 
stopped and brought her hands to her face. It was not 


INDEPENDENCE 


271 


a trifle that was distressing the girl, Mr. Argush was 
now convinced, and his paternal heart was much con- 
cerned. He slackened his pace and every moment asked 
how she felt. At last they reached the Chernin home. 

Eight men sat playing poker in the kitchen, the room 
into which the entrance door led. Above and around 
them hovered a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, which dis- 
persed as if intending to make room for the visitors. 
Olga Chernin, dark, tall and stately, with a smile that 
bade all the world welcome, rose to greet her guests. 
An inquiring look from Olga reminded Mr. Argush that 
he had forgotten to introduce Minnie. 

“Oh, this is Miss Mendel, our boarderke.” Mr. and 
Mrs. Chernin shook hands with her. The eight card 
players rose from their chairs and saluted with exagger- 
ated chivalry. A burst of laughter and a shuffling of 
chairs filled the small room with jolly noise. The tea- 
kettle spat out of its snout upon the red-hot stove. 

Minnie was bewildered. She turned deathly pale. A 
sudden dizziness overtook her. Mr. Argush turned 
quickly to support her. “Take her to lie down !” he cried 
to Olga, who caught her round the waist and led her 
through the railroad flat. 

For all the ricketiness of the bed and the dinginess of 
the room, it was a comfort to Minnie, who ached in 
every limb and was soul weary. 

Olga, seating herself on the edge of the bed, stroked 
her hair and meditated. Poor child, so young and a 
boarderke already! Goodness knew how such things 
came to be in this most glorious of all countries ! The 
Argushes had only two rooms. The child probably slept 
in the kitchen. Where did she work? Where were her 
parents ? 


2J2 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


'‘I can stay alone,” Minnie said. 

“Oh, no, that’s all right, I’ll stay here.” Olga spoke 
cordially, and she stooped and kissed the newcomer on 
her forehead. 

A warm, peaceful feeling stirred in Minnie’s breast, a 
tenderness for Olga, the stranger of a few minutes ago. 
She laid her hand in hers. 

From the kitchen, where Mr. Argush was now seated 
with the others participating in the game of cards, came 
his voice leading in a melancholy Russian melody. He 
began softly, like a lover not uncertain of his welcome 
come awooing ; then, finding himself repulsed, using per- 
suasion. The song rose to notes of passionate disap- 
pointment, was modulated again as with pleading, and 
died out as in despair. 

Olga felt tears drop on her hand. She leaned for- 
ward. 

“What is it, dear?” she asked tenderly. Minnie wept 
the more. 

Another soft melody. 

Minnie’s soul merged with Olga’s. Naively and pas- 
sionately emphasizing her distress because the Argushes 
and Louis might suspect her of having lied as to the raise, 
Minnie told Olga her story. 

Good Olga’s heart warmed with fond motherliness to- 
ward this child. “You did perfectly right to run away,” 
she soothed her, “and you must certainly not go back.” 

Minnie’s child heart was somewhat relieved. But the 
greatest worry was still with her: the untruthfulness of 
which she might be suspected. 

“I tell you what,” said Olga, hitting upon a happy idea, 
“come here every morning with a paper and start out 
from here to look for work ! You will soon find it with- 


INDEPENDENCE 


2/3 


out doubt All your spare time spend here. No one 
needs to know you are without work at all. And when 
you get another place, who will know whether it’s the 
Titanic Biscuit Company or The Schmitanic Trisket 
Company you are working in?” She spoke enthusiastic- 
ally, entering wholeheartedly into the little girl’s per- 
turbed state of heart. 

Olga had lifted the universe from the acquiescent Min- 
nie’s shoulders. 


XVI 

Olga and Boris Chernin, with their son Gregory, had 
had to flee from Russia to escape exile to Siberia on 
account of radical propaganda. Boris and Olga’s aristo- 
cratic training in Russia had made no provision for the 
earning of a livelihood. In democratic America, Boris 
found himself compelled to choose between working or 
starving. He took any job that offered itself, one win- 
ter even shoveling snow. That winter he was taken ill 
with pneumonia, for a time hanging between life and 
death and emerging a candidate for tuberculosis. What 
with poor care because of lack of means, he soon suc- 
cumbed to the disease ; after which Olga peddled small 
articles, did day’s work, and served as midwife, all to 
keep her husband in a boarding-house at Liberty, her 
son Gregory at school, and herself alive. Boris got bet- 
ter, and Gregory entered college with honors. Several 
times Boris tried his hand again at work of different sorts, 
but his health, each time, threatened to give way, and 
Olga insisted upon remaining the sole dependable bread- 
winner and allowed him only to do odd jobs now and then 
when he felt especially well. Leisure hung too heavily on 


274 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


the man’s hands. Friends dropped in evenings, and 
sometimes during the day as well, to play cards for the 
pure comradeship of it. The habit grew, as did also the 
number of men that came, until Olga, exhausted, beaten 
by the daily struggle, to which she never could become ac- 
customed, evolved the plan of charging the men a fee for 
the privilege. Soon she herself took part in the games. 
She had luck, and so did Boris. The innocent playhouse 
became a professional gambling den, though always pre- 
serving a certain air of decency, upon which Olga insisted 
on Gregory’s account. If, she would think in bitter ap- 
prehension, he were to recall his home in later years as a 
foul place, his mother and father as unclean people! 
Yet often she told herself that if he were the son of his 
parents in the soul as well as in the body, he would de- 
velop sufficient sympathy to realize that a man treated 
like a dog cannot be hung for failing to behave like a 
man. Gregory would surely remember the days when he 
and she had huddled together in the cold and shared a 
miserable cot. 

* * * * j}c S|e 

Minnie, with a newspaper under her arm, arrived at 
the Chernin home early the next morning. It was a 
rainy day and so dark still that the family was only just 
stirring ; yet she was greeted with the warmest cordiality. 

“This is my son, Gregory,” Olga called to Minnie. 

A young chap in shirt sleeves, with large, soft, brown 
eyes like his mother’s, a generous mouth, rather high 
cheek bones, and a shock of curly brown hair, smiled at 
her. Minnie spontaneously smiled back. 

“Gregory, dear,” Olga said in her high-pitched, caress- 
ing voice, as she pointed to a chair at the window, “take 
your coat off the chair and let Minnie sit down.” 


INDEPENDENCE 


275 


Gregory cleared the chair and Minnie sat down. 
“Spread your newspaper on the table, dear,” said Olga. 

When Minnie was comfortably seated Olga turned to 
tidy the room. Gregory, glancing at Minnie, caught a 
frightened look in her eyes, as if she felt out of place. 
He looked away. He felt sorry for her. Minnie became 
absorbed in the “Help Wanted — Female” columns. 
When next she looked up, the room was tidied, the three 
were dressed, Gregory in a becoming dark blue suit, and 
Olga was saying: “The coffee is ready.” She insisted 
that Minnie join them. Minnie protested with intense 
earnestness, wholly unconscious that out of a corner of 
his eye Gregory was watching her two gray ones as they 
did their imploring to be let off. Her eyes had that 
quality of innocent mesmerism which draws men against 
their will. It was her very unconsciousness of their 
charm that made her the more fascinating. 

It was the between-season when Christmas activity has 
not yet begun and advertisements for help are few. Olga 
urged Minnie not to worry. As it was raining hard, it 
was just as well for her to stay indoors that day, she 
said. 

Toward the middle of the morning men began to strag- 
gle in. Olga, answering a question she thought must be 
in Minnie’s mind, lightly explained their presence. The 
one effect of the explanation upon the child, who had no 
idea of the interrelation of card-playing and indecency, 
was to leave her puzzled as to why it had been given. 
Only the sophisticated are suspicious. Minnie had met 
men in this home the night before; it was quite natural 
to meet men here again. 

Olga saw that Minnie looked tired and concluding at 
the same time that it would be more comfortable for 


276 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


everyone if she were in another room, took her to the 
bedroom. “It will do you good to lie down/’ she said. 
“Try even to sleep.” Kissing her gently, she left her 
alone. 

An hour later Minnie was awakened by a shout, fol- * 
lowed by a thunderous laugh. Above all the voices 
Olga’s coursed through the air like a peal of music. 

“Full house!” 

The girl jumped up and ran to the kitchen. She was 
dressed in a bright, orange-colored mull blouse with a 
black tie and a black skirt, which, for all its cheapness, 
was immensely becoming. Her hair was dishevelled, her 
cheeks were flushed from sleep, her eyes shone like two 
stars. She stood in the doorway, hands clutched below 
her breast, head and shoulders slightly forward, lips 
parted, and brows slightly lifted. First some, then all, 
of the men raised their eyes and were silenced by the 
girlish vision. 

“Well, dear, did you have a nice sleep?” Olga called 
pleasantly, smiling. 

The spell was broken. Minnie relaxed and entered 
farther into the room, falling into her natural timidity. 

“Yes,” she said, glancing shyly from one man to an- 
other. 

One of the gamblers, large of body and tight of mus- 
cle, with small, insinuating eyes and mountainous cheek- 
bones, gazed at Minnie hard, an impertinent smile play- 
ing round his lips. She had to drop her eyes. 

Olga rose to fill the tea glasses and gave her chair to 
Minnie, who took it diffidently. 

“Give her some tea, too,” Boris called to Olga. 

“Of course,” Olga rejoined in a tone implying there 
was no need to make this suggestion. No Russian has 


INDEPENDENCE 


277 


to be reminded that tea and hospitality go hand in hand. 

When the glasses were filled, Olga brought herself a 
chair from the bedroom. The gamblers, moving closer 
to the table, resumed their play. Heads were bent lower. 
The ugly expression of hunters in pursuit of prey fell 
like a veil over each face. Now and then one stopped 
to take a sip of strong tea, perhaps to throw a look at 
the young female stranger, whose eyes followed their 
activity with an interest that grew more intense with each 
new shout of enthusiasm, with each explosion of coarse 
laughter. 

The man with the mountainous cheekbones, Joe by 
name, raised his eyes oftener than the others to feast 
upon the new female. He speculated as to the reasons 
for her presence, and since his experience was by no 
means limited to this one gambling house his conjectures 
ran riot. She looked young and as if she had never wit- 
nessed gambling before, yet, he decided, she must be six- 
teen at least and maybe was shamming innocence. 
Womenfolk were artists at shamming. He would find 
out. Several times he cleared his throat and glanced at 
Minnie as if he meant to say something. Finally he came 
out with it, ostensibly addressing the gathering in gen- 
eral. 

“Well, why can't the young lady join in the game?” 
He glanced covertly at her. 

There followed an exchange of looks, during which 
activity was suspended. Olga refrained from saying 
something that seemed to be on the tip of her tongue. 
She contemplated the girl, shrugged her shoulders, and 
again fastened her attention on the cards. 

Minnie looked shyly from one to another. She rested 
her eyes longest, and gratefully, upon Joe, who was 


278 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


thereby imbued with greater courage. Pulling himself 
together, he rose, moved his chair nearer to his neigh- 
bor’s, told the others to do the same, and invited Minnie 
to “move close and be a sport.” She hesitated, with a 
diffident glance at Olga. Olga, just then reminded by 
her husband that the glasses needed replenishing again, 
rose; she smiled only half consent upon Minnie, and 
Minnie remained where she was, seated outside the 
circle. 

“Nu, tqll the baby she can play!” called Joe to Olga. 

Giving her shoulders a nonchalant shrug, Olga said to 
Minnie : 

“If you want to. It won’t hurt you, I suppose. Try. 
It is fun.” 

It was a moment of exultation for Minnie, who took 
her place eagerly, quivering with joyful anticipation. 

Joe snatched Olga’s chair, which was next to Minnie’s, 
and gaily ordered Olga to take his. His interest so flat- 
tered Minnie that she at once conceived a liking for this 
big man. When he insisted that Olga make her tea as 
strong as everybody else’s, saying Olga did not give the 
girl credit for being the “sport” that she was, her grati- 
tude knew no bounds. For the first time in her life she 
saw some importance in being Minnie.’ Her eyes, shining 
with the new light, were extraordinarily beautiful ; and 
Joe lent himself readily to their charm. Bent, moreover, 
upon testing her, he edged closer and proceeded to give 
instructions. She felt his warm breath graze her cheek; 
his shoulder touched hers, his leg leaned against hers. 
His manner was vigorous, inspiring, his voice deep, his 
tone compelling. He was irresistible, masterful. Minnie 
felt agitated — stormed. 

Thus and so was meant by the stakes, the blind, the 


INDEPENDENCE 


279 


straddle, the ante. The game had seemed so simple when 
she had watched the men playing! Now it appeared a 
fearful complication. Her face fell into troubled lines; 
and when some of the players grew impatient her heart 
pounded unmercifully. Joe swiftly hushed the com- 
plainants. If they didn’t like it they could get out, he 
thundered. Joe was a masterful man ; they submitted. 
Turning again to Minnie, he said: “It sounds worse than 
it is,” and went on teaching her about pairs, straights, 
flush, full house, fours, straight flush, royal flush. Here 
some laughed and made comment : “It’s ken heppen may- 
be perhaps possible efsher!” 

A sample game to be played. There was grumbling, 
but the game was played. Minnie leaned eagerly toward 
Joe for this and that bit of information. She followed 
his instructions with a zest that delighted him. 

At last came a real game! Joe was financial backer. 

Her chest rose and fell feverishly. She quivered from 
head to toe. Her hair became moist round her forehead 
and fell low in becoming ringlets. Her heightened color 
enhanced the false brilliance of her eyes. She reminded 
one of a young, spirited horse galloping. Not even Joe’s 
leg, which persistently rested against hers, though she un- 
consciously kept moving her own leg away, actually 
roused her from the trance. Six times, without her being 
conscious of it, Olga had refilled her glass with strong 
tea. 

After a number of rounds she quite quietly ran up 
the betting. When “called,” she said as quietly : 
“Straight flush.” 

A moment of tense incredulity. Minnie laid her cards 
down. A craning of necks. A roar that ended in a veri- 
table panic. The gamers shrieked, laughed, pushed, 


28 o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


punched one another all at the same time. The thick 
cloud of smoke above their heads moved as if in search 
of safer quarters. 

Minnie, at first dazed, soon tingled with delirious ex- 
citement ; and when a pile of money was shoved her way 
she was almost overcome. She thrilled and quivered 
under the spell of the new birth of her personality. 

No wonder that after this Minnie quite abandoned the 
thought of job-hunting. In this heaven of thrill and ex- 
citement, she even made money — more money than she 
had made working for the Titanic Biscuit Company. She 
hated the day to end. She regretted having to go to bed. 
In the mornings she hurried off eagerly from the Argush 
home. For weeks never a thought of other things en- 
tered her mind. She developed a light-heartedness, a vi- 
vacity, a new brilliance that slipped from her tongue and 
darted from her eyes. 

Louis took the greatest delight in the successful Ar- 
gush care of their “boarderke” and boasted : 

“Not for nothing did I tell you she is a mighty smart 
girl.” The Argushes themselves, little suspecting the 
games and the dozen glasses of tea working in Minnie’s 
veins, were delighted with their own effective hospitality. 

XVII 

Joe’s seat remained permanently beside Minnie’s. He 
would have it so. 

Olga, though a wise woman on the whole, was blind to 
this that was going on under her very nose. Beneath her 
roof, gambling, elsewhere an obnoxious vice, became 
nothing more nocuous than a “little game or two of 
poker.” Elsewhere the sight of a young Minnie with 


INDEPENDENCE 


281 


eyes glittering more lustfully every day, would have in- 
censed her. But in her own home what harm? Better 
that than a Titanic Biscuit Company with foremen and 
what not. Likewise, the foreman was a rogue, while 
Joe, one of her guests, was not, though his entire per- 
sonality proclaimed his rascality and his small eyes fed 
like leeches on Minnie’s youth. She would even tease 
Minnie laughingly. “Some day a man will run away 
with your two gray eyes,” she would say. Joe she would 
tease about being in love with the girl and warn him he 
had a rival in her own son Gregory. 

One day something occurred to open Olga’s eyes. 

Gregory disapproved of his parents’ business, though 
his disapproval at first, as he was too young at the time 
to appreciate its sordidness, came from his hatred of the 
constant hilarity, the thick smoke, the atmosphere of free- 
masonry. His was a quiet, brooding, refined nature. 
When he complained, his mother took pains to explain 
carefully that his father was too sick to work, while she 
herself could stand a rough struggle no longer and was 
eager also to give him the advantages of a good educa- 
tion. She convinced him she had no other choice and so 
won his tolerance. It was now about a year since he 
had entered any complaint. 

In that one year Gregory had matured. He had come 
into contact at college with other eighteen-year-old 
youths, Russian Jews, who took immense delight in long 
discussions of sociological problems and were far wiser 
than he about life and its mud puddles. Gambling, in 
their opinion, was so unquestionably an evil that their 
few curt, uncompromising words, when it was mentioned 
once, left Gregory with a painful smart. He never in- 
vited his college mates to his home. ... In most of their 


282 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


discussions he took an equal part, but became a silent 
listener when they launched in their free, advanced way 
upon the subject of sex. In this, too, they seemed so 
much wiser than he. One young reactionary knew 
Schopenhauer’s essay on woman by heart. A champion 
of the sex fought him with Mill on The Subjection of 
Woman; a “radical” came to the support of the cham- 
pion with Bebel’s Die Frau , while a modern young cynic 
said “take a whip along” when you call on a woman; 
which also provoked endless arguments, favorable and 
unfavorable, concerning the qualities of the sex. In con- 
sequence Gregory came to realize that women were “dif- 
ferent.” Heretofore he had not been conscious of them 
as a separate kind of being and his opposite. He began 
to study the one of the species that fell under his direct 
experience. 

She was different. She was something as different 
from the boys he knew as a light and airy thing was dif- 
ferent from the kitchen table of his home. She was awe- 
inspiring. She made him want to keep aloof. It seemed 
to him he could never bring himself to speak to her, for 
her answers, he felt vaguely, would probably be different 
in the same way as she herself ; would puzzle him, em- 
barrass him. 

Minnie, for her part, was attracted to Gregory, even 
though his presence, to which she was always keenly 
alive, and his steady brown eyes fastened upon her 
had a disconcerting effect upon her at card-playing 
times. 

One Saturday morning when she reached the Chernin 
tenement she hesitated to go up to the home out of the 
sensitive consideration that it was their day of rest (be- 
cause of their customers’ piety), when they indulged in 


INDEPENDENCE 


283 

late rising, and she would be intruding. She seated her- 
self on the stairway to waste an hour. 

For the first time in the weeks of her gaming, her mind, 
as she crouched in the gloom of the hall, reverted to her 
home. She pictured the members of her family, who 
would just then be rising and dressing. (Sarah had re- 
tained the custom of Sabbath rest.) She visualized 
Beckie partly dressed, rosy and pretty, languidly and aim- 
lessly hunting in out-of-the-way corners for her clothes, 
which she always misplaced. She heard the others laugh- 
ing at and teasing her for her forgetfulness. She heard 
her mother calling each in turn to breakfast. She saw 
them all at table, talking, laughing. She felt lonely, mel- 
ancholy. 

“What are you doing here?” a man’s voice cried. It 
was Gregory coming down the stairs, thrown off his usual 
reserve by the unexpected encounter. 

“I’m sitting — I’m sitting — I hated to go in — you — you 
— get up late Saturdays — I’m always intruding ” 

He liked the softness of her voice; he was drawn to 
her. He had a fleeting desire to tell her to stop gambling, 
and to ask her why she didn’t live at home and go to 
school. 

A book dropped from his hand. They bent simul- 
taneously to pick it up; their heads collided. They 
straightened up and laughed. Minnie’s laugh had the 
same gay ring as when things went well at the card 
table. Gregory stood a moment smiling down on her, 
then stooped to pick up the book. “They are up and they 
are waiting for you,” he said. Touching the brim of his 
hat, he said good-by and left. 

Minnie looked after him until he was out of sight. It 
was with an excited flutter of her heart, which the simple 


284 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


encounter did not warrant, that she made her way up- 
stairs. Several times she had to stop for breath. The 
weeks of unwholesome living were telling on her. 

She arrived at an opportune moment. The Chernins 
had forgotten to tell Gregory that they were going to an 
uncle for lunch and he was to join them there. Minnie 
could tell him. In a few minutes they left, Olga urging 
Minnie to make herself at home and eat something, as 
she looked so pale and must have come away without 
breakfast. 

Being alone was a novel sensation, a pleasant sen- 
sation — and yet one was somehow reminded of the tired- 
ness which one forgot in the bustle. Minnie rubbed her 
eyes, stretched, yawned, and went to lie down on Greg- 
ory’s cot in the dark, air-tight room adjoining the kitchen. 
How luxurious it felt to stretch full length — to be with- 
out fear that someone would intrude! It was quiet — 
quiet ! Oh, how good it felt ! She placed her arms in a 
circle above her head. Thoughts of the games, Joe’s ever- 
ready helpfulness, his enthusiasm and pride over her 
gains warmed her being like a cordial. Joe was a great 
deal like Louis, she thought ; yet they were different. 
Joe was always awfully sure of himself ; Louis was awk- 
ward and embarrassed. There were other differences, 
too. After all they were not so much alike. Perhaps it 
was simply that they were both big. My, how loudly Joe 
talked! Her mother would have referred to him as a 
“suldat.” Louis was always very nice now when they 
took walks together. He never acted again as he had on 
that rainy day. She hardly ever remembered it any more. 
Now she thought of it, it struck her that ever since then 
Louis had seemed less easy with her. “That’s because he 
knows he wasn’t true,” she decided. . . . She wondered 


INDEPENDENCE 


285 


when Gregory would return. It somehow gave her pleas- 
ure to think of him to-day. He was so nice — his brown 
eyes and all. And he had laughed so heartily after the 
collision of their heads! Had that been one of his col- 
lege books? Could he be going to the same college as 
Abie Ratkin — as — as — Jacob! She sat up, frightened. 
Goodness! What if he did know Jacob and should tell 
him where she was ! 

The bell rang. She jumped up and ran with pounding 
heart to the door. It was Gregory. Olga’s message 
fairly burst from her. Her eagerness and earnestness 
were so out of proportion, that Gregory was moved to 
laugh. What could she do but laugh, too ? They laughed 
and laughed. Finally he whipped off his cap and said he 
would make tea: it was cold out and he was chilled. 
Would Minnie drink, too ? Maybe. She was really weak 
with hunger. The night before she had had no appetite 
for supper. It was nearly twenty-four hours since she 
had eaten anything. After the laugh her legs trembled ; 
and how her heart pounded! She went quickly to sit 
down. Picking up one of Gregory’s library books from 
the table, she cried: 

“Oh, algebra!” 

Gregory, astonished, turned from the stove. 

“Do you know algebra?” 

“Oh, yes. I passed with high marks.” 

He was more greatly astonished. 

“Did you go to college ?” 

“No. High School, Wadleigh High School” 

“What year?” 

“Twod ” 

It was a slip of the tongue. They laughed. 

“Second,” she finally wedged in between giggles. 


286 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“What languages did you have?” 

“German and Latin.” 

“Why don’t you go to high school now?” 

She dropped her eyes. Her face clouded over. But 
she felt at ease now with Gregory, and answered 
frankly : 

“Because I have a stepfather and I went away from 
home.” 

Gregory proceeded with the tea preparations more 
thoughtfully. 

Minnie found herself wishing he would hurry. A feel- 
ing of faintness was coming upon her. To hide what 
she knew must be the traitorous pallor of her face, she 
walked over to the window and stood looking out. In 
a moment Gregory heard a thud. He dropped the lid of 
the teakettle, turned and saw Minnie on the floor. He 
rushed over to her, shook her, called her by name. She 
made no answer. He lifted her and carried her to his 
cot. Running back for a glass of water, he dashed it in 
her face. She came to. 

“Yes,” she said in reply to his question, “I have fainted 
before.” 

Following her instructions, he quickly brought a wet 
towel, bound it about her head, and laid coverings over 
her, for she was having a chill. When she felt better he 
made her drink tea with whisky in it. 

“Are you sure you feel better?” Gregory was not so 
willing to take her word for it, as the rings under her 
eyes were very dark. “I’ll bet you had no breakfast!” 
he ventured. 

Minnie made no answer. 

“I’ll boil you some eggs.” 

“Oh, no, don’t. I don’t feel like eating,” she said, sit- 


INDEPENDENCE 28; 

ting up. But she grew terribly dizzy. Bringing her 
hands up to her eyes, she groaned. 

“What’s the matter?” cried Gregory, forcing her down 
on the cot again. 

“Don’t!” pleaded Minnie. 

At that moment they were both startled by a voice. 

“Nu! Nu!” 

It was Joe, who had come for his umbrella, many times 
forgotten. Drawing his own conclusion about the prox- 
imity of the two young people, he laughed a coarse laugh. 

“Oh, you kids !” 

“How did you get in ?” asked Gregory. 

“I left the patent lock open,” Minnie explained. 

“She fainted,” said Gregory. “Mama and papa are 
away.” And he went on to say that they were expecting 
him for lunch and he was in quite a dilemma about 
meeting them. 

Joe eyed the boy closely. His first conjecture faded a 
bit. Gregory seemed to be telling the truth. Yet if he 
himself, Joe decided rapidly, were caught in so compro- 
mising a position he would have found a blanket of sham 
far thicker than Gregory’s — yes, even at Gregory’s age. 
“I’ll tell him to go to his parents” — thought he; “I’ll 
offer to mind her myself.” And so he did. 

Did Minnie think she was all right? asked Gregory. 
Was she sure it was all right for him to go? Yes, in- 
deed. He went. 

The moment the door shut, Joe swung into the bed- 
room and sat down on the cot, a voluptuous smile playing 
upon his face and in his tiny, insinuating eyes. “Well,” 
he said, “are we going to be a good girl ?” He smoothed 
her face, her hair, her neck in a single stroke. She was 
not afraid, but she moved her head away. 


288 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Come on, come on/’ he cried brazenly, “sweet sixteen 
and never been kissed ?” She blinked her eyes. “Never 
been kissed ?” he insisted. His vigor, his vulgarity, made 
her feel dizzy; she gulped for breath. Nothing has the 
power so to intimidate finer natures as vulgarity. 

“Yes,” she felt compelled to reply. 

He ha-ha’d; the place rang with his ha-ha! How it 
pleases a man to discover he is right! 

“There !” he cried, as he bent his bulky upper half for- 
ward and lifted her like a feather in his arms. He 
planked down a kiss on her lips which brought their 
teeth into contact. 

Before Minnie could think beyond her tremendous sur- 
prise, she heard a woman’s scream. 

“God mine!” 

With a jerk Joe released her. 

It was Olga. She and Boris, not finding the uncle at 
home, had returned. They had met Gregory at the foot 
of the stairs. 

There was a silent measuring of souls with eyes. 

“You dirty, rotten bum, if you know what’s good for 
you, get out of this house and don’t you ever cross this 
threshold again !” Olga pointed to the door. 

Joe insolently sauntered past her for his hat and um- 
brella, and in the same insolent manner made for the 
door. There, with hat in hand, he stood for a second 
holding the knob, threw an insinuating smile at Gregory, 
which he transferred to the mother and next to Minnie, 
who had risen from the cot and was standing in the door- 
way between the rooms. 

“Ha-ha !” he roared, “the son is younger ” 

Olga caught the insinuation in a flash. Had she laid 
undue confidence in the girl? Joe had taken her heart, 


INDEPENDENCE 289 

pierced it, and thrown it back in her face. She wanted 
to kill him. 

“Get out of here!” she shouted. 

He left after another ha-ha. 

Minnie, panic-stricken, stood transfixed. Things had 
happened so quickly that she was dazed into unconscious- 
ness of their reality. She seemed to be dreaming a night- 
mare. Olga darted a look at her that made her cower as 
before an instrument of death. Then the tension broke. 
Minnie fainted again. 

The same thing had happened before, Gregory said, 
and told the full story of how he had come to leave Min- 
nie in Joe’s care. Olga’s mother heart clung to the ex- 
planation with fierce relief. That was what it had been. 
Joe, in his vile mind, had distorted her boy’s innocent 
ministrations. 

Olga, bending over Minnie and trying to revive her, 
suddenly realized that the girl must no longer be left 
ignorant of the facts of life. She must be told everything 
as her mother would have told her had she deserved the 
name of mother. And she must no longer be allowed to 
come to the house to gamble. How was it, Olga blamed 
herself, she had never realized the enormous danger of 
it before ! She must have been blind, an idiot ! 

XVIII 

Minnie rested on Gregory’s cot until the late after- 
noon ; then Olga, considering the time opportune, as the 
menfolk were away, called to her to come to the kitchen. 

“Sit down here.” Olga indicated a chair beside her. 

What had Olga to say ? Minnie felt impending doom. 
Was it to scold her because “that Joe” had kissed her! 


290 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


All day as she had lain struggling for the physical 
strength to rise and go home, the thought of his conduct 
had tortured her. She had felt again, now with disgust, 
his rough face against hers; the recollection of his kiss 
sickened her somewhere way down in the pit of her 
stomach. Mrs. Chernin — did she think it was her fault, 
that she was to blame ? 

“Minnie,” Olga began gravely — Minnie grew limp with 
fright — “I have something to tell you. I will speak to 
you like a mother.” 

The child stared at her. 

“My dear, you are a child yet and — how old are you ?” 

“Going on sixteen.” 

“Sixteen !” Olga looked away, tears in her eyes. She 
sat silent a while, thinking commiseratingly of the poor 
little girl's lot and wondering how she ought to begin 
her warning. It was so hard. Bracing herself with the 
thought that it was inevitable, she moved forward and 
began. 

“You remember what happened to you in the Titanic 
Biscuit Company — the foreman, I mean?” Minnie re- 
membered. “Well, for Joe to kiss you is just as bad — 
it's wrong — in fact ” 

“Uh, I know it,” cried Minnie, so glad to be able to 
agree with Olga. She nodded her head vehemently. 

Goodness, what did this girl understand — what didn’t 
she understand! Olga was wholly puzzled. She sighed 
and scrutinized Minnie. No, she didn’t understand — 
really — and she wasn’t feigning innocence. She was a 
baby. She had to be told everything. Her instinctive 
understanding had to be re-enforced by definite knowl- 
edge. The attractiveness of her personality to men was 
only enhanced by her innocence. Some day she would 


INDEPENDENCE 


291 


fall a prey to some beast. Olga was in a flutter. How 
to say it ! Just what to say ! If only someone had talked 
to Olga herself when she had been a young girl, maybe 
she would know better how to proceed. 

“You know, dearie, you are a girl. The others are 
men. Men and girls marry.” 

“Yes ” 

Olga lapsed again into silence. What in the world was 
she to say ! She looked despairingly at the clock. Greg- 
ory or Boris might return at any moment. 

“It is only when a man and a woman are married that 
the man has the right to hold her in his arms, to kiss her. 
You were right when you ran away from your fore- 
man.” 

Minnie thought of the doctor and of Louis. 

“Did anybody else treat you like that?” There was 
still a small, lingering doubt in Olga’s heart as to what 
might have transpired between Minnie and Gregory. 

“Yes. A doctor and another man.” 

“What did they do ? Who is the other man ?” 

“The other man is Louis ; he is a painter.” 

Olga smiled at the addendum. 

“What did they do?” 

Minnie reflected, feeling some hesitancy in telling. 
“Kissed me and held me tight, especially the doctor. He 
and I were lying on a lounge.” 

Again Olga was puzzled. What exactly had the girl 
experienced ? 

“Did Gregory kiss you, too?” 

“Uh, no!” Minnie cried, shocked. 

Olga was at last satisfied and felt very tenderly toward 
Minnie. 

“Do you understand now what I mean?” Her voice 


292 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


carried so much helplessness, she might have been plead- 
ing for a favor. 

“What?” Minnie asked naively. 

“Well, that you must never allow any man or boy to 
fondle you, kiss you, except if you are married to him or 
are going to marry him.” 

Minnie sat silent. She knew it, yes, she knew it. But 
what — how could she help it if they did it to her ? 

“I never ask them to.” 

“Of course you don’t ; but don’t let them.” 

“I ran away from them.” 

Oh, there wasn’t any use trying to explain. After all, 
Minnie would have to grow older. She would learn. It 
would develop like a plant in her. For the present she 
had the instinct of self-preservation. 

Olga, certain she could be no more explicit, was about 
to drop the subject when, out of sheer curiosity, she 
asked : 

“Do you mind when they do it to you ?” 

Minnie took a moment to think. The doctor and Louis 
had frightened her and so had the foreman, but not Joe. 
She liked Joe. Disgust of his embrace had come only in 
retrospect. 

Olga sat reflecting upon the oddness of it — Joe, a 
coarse fellow, vile, sordid, was a man Minnie liked! She 
switched off to another subject, equally as much on her 
heart. 

“And then, Minnie,” she began, “gambling is not very 
nice for a young girl. When I first allowed you to play, 
I had no idea that you would keep it up indefinitely. 
You remember I let you come here so that you could 
have a place from where to look for another position.” 

Minnie was astonished at the abrupt change of sub- 


INDEPENDENCE 


293 


ject. All her sensitiveness was pricked into attention. 
She instantly decided Olga was reproaching her. Olga 
saw that she had turned pale and hesitated to continue. 

“It is nearing Christmas time, the busy season/ 1 she 
resumed after a time, putting even greater severity into 
her tone, “you ought to be able to get work now — in a 
store perhaps. You ought not to be content to spend 
every day gambling here with a lot of men.” Bad 
enough, Olga was thinking sorrowfully that she had to 
spend her days so. For a sweet, innocent child, with 
every opportunity in life, to choose gambling! 

How could Minnie discern the tenderness behind Ol- 
ga’s advice? Child that she was, she saw only that Olga 
was closing her home to her, was accusing her of having 
outstayed her welcome. And before her lay work in a 
shop again! The horror that she had been convinced 
was past and done with faced her again. Her soul 
quaked. She wanted to cling to Olga, to beg her to let 
her stay. But a stronger instinct, her pride, held her 
back. 

“You will be much better off, dear,” Olga continued. 
“You will work in a store and make regular wages and 
get yourself nice dresses, and some day you will marry. 

This is no way ” The “dear” touched Minnie. She 

began to cry. Olga, meaning to comfort her, unfortu- 
nately chose the wrong thing to say. “I let you come a 
long time. I don’t think you have anything to cry about. 
Another girl would have thought of going away of her 
own accord, sooner ” 

Minnie screamed. 

Olga, alarmed, touched her on the arm and told her 
to control herself. Minnie wrenched herself free. Why 
had Olga fooled her — made her think she was welcome? 


294 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Olga, almost as much as Joe, had always laughed appreci- 
atively when she, Minnie, had had good luck, and had 
always encouraged her in the spirited part she took in 
the games. She had not been true, she had not been true ! 
She resented Olga with all her heart. 

How should Minnie have guessed that Olga also was 
naive? But for Joe’s flagrant manifestation of rascality, 
Olga might have remained blind to the risk she was tak- 
ing with the fate of the child in her care. 

“Take your hands away from your face,” Olga said. 
Her voice sounded even greater severity. Indignantly 
Minnie jumped from her seat and rushed out of the 
house. 

In the ground-floor hall she encountered Gregory. 

“What are you crying about?” He was full of con- 
cern. 

She edged away. He followed her. 

“What are you crying about?” 

She pushed past him and ran out. 


XIX 

The Argushes, who had been anxious when Minnie did 
not return at her usual Saturday hour, welcomed her 
with a cordiality that reflected their relief. But her red- 
rimmed eyes and downcast air alarmed them all over 
again. 

“God mine!” cried Mrs. Argush, “what happened to 
you? Did you meet with an accident?” 

Minnie brushed past her into the bedroom and, with- 
out waiting for permission, threw herself on the bed, 
where she cried and cried. The perplexed couple could 


INDEPENDENCE 


295 


extract no explanation from her nor coax her into par- 
taking of the evening meal. 

At eight o’clock Louis happened in. The wildest sur- 
mises leapt to his mind. He was dreadfully distressed. 
Like the Argushes, he coaxed and coaxed her to take him 
into her confidence, but with as little success. Finally, by 
the greatest gentleness, he persuaded her to go out with 
him for a walk. 

“You must tell me what happened to you,” he said, 
after they had walked a block in silence. No, she 
wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t. But, despite her 
protestations, some inner voice told Minnie that event- 
ually she would. 

“What have you to hide ?” Louis shrewdly asked. His 
face reddened. Minnie’s silence in response even to this 
was particularly ominous. His breath came short and 
fast. Minnie, frightened by his emotion, brought her 
thumb to her mouth and looked at him from down up. 
“You must tell me. I am bound to know. Tell me,” he 
commanded, taking hold of her arm. 

Though tears of resentment at this importunateness 
came to her eyes, though her voice choked over the lump 
in her throat, she told Louis everything that had hap- 
pened to her, beginning with the foreman of the Titanic 
Biscuit Company and ending with Olga’s advice. The 
last she repeated in a manner which plainly conveyed 
that, though Louis himself had confused her, at last she 
knew. 

Louis smiled. He smiled in spite of his pity for her, 
in spite of his perplexity as to what it was about this 
girl that rendered her a prey to his species. She was not 
beautiful, though there was an attractive something 
about her personality; nor — and his eyes glanced over 


296 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


her slight frame — was she even well develdped. His un- 
derstanding shrugged its shoulders, while his heart 
clenched its teeth with jealousy at the thought that an- 
other man might possess her. 

Louis’ sudden passion in the Dakowsky kitchen had 
deepened into something greater. He had come on fre- 
quent visits to the Argushes, had taken many walks with 
Minnie, had entered into her mental attitude upon things 
which, immature as it was, carried a delicacy and a 
sense of justice which to him, especially because he was 
boorish, had a fascination. She wouldn’t go back home 
because her uncle wasn’t fair; she wouldn’t have her 
mother know of her hardships because a mother ought 
naturally to be concerned ; if she had to be reminded that 
she was a mother, it showed a lack which made her an 
undeserving mother, and so it was perfectly fair that 
she, Minnie, deprive her of her oldest daughter. She did 
not want Dora to know that she had made the compromise 
of going to work in a shop, because Dora, not having ex- 
perienced the struggle herself, would call it weakness. 
As a matter of fact, Minnie herself considered it was 
weakness. She ought rather to have killed herself. . . . 
She didn’t think a man with intelligence and ambition 
ought to be a painter. Sharing a front room on the East 
Side was an affront to a right standard of living ; refine- 
ment demanded more. She considered having to live 
with the Argushes an imposition on her by God. 

Then there had come the period of stimulation from 
card playing, when she blossomed into a charming vi- 
vacity like a flower in season. She romped with the 
Argush baby, her eyes full of mischief ; she talked to it 
in a vocabulary beyond the others’ comprehension, and 
laughed gaily over her own sport. The evenings when 


INDEPENDENCE 


297 


Louis visited she seemed especially full of fun ; she would 
make one mischievous remark after another, charming 
and delighting Louis. 

He had, in fact, for weeks been thinking of marriage 
to Minnie, though his mind was not yet at peace about it. 
In his own estimation he was a mere “paintner;” an 
American high-school girl could aspire to a nobler al- 
liance, he felt. 

Yet he was sure he would treat her better than any 
other man ; he would carry her about in his arms to save 
her footsteps, he often said to himself ; he would care for 
her better than for himself. Now she was struggling, 
and with her determination not to return home, what 
other relief was there if not marriage? True, she was 
very young to think of marriage, but she was wise 
enough. No one was ever so childish in matters of sex 
as she, and so wise in other matters. 

Walking beside him, depressed, her youth so severe a 
condemnation of the hard fate pursuing her, his heart 
went out to her in boundless tenderness. Almost as a 
surprise to himself, he said : 

“Minnie, let us get married. I’ll take the best care 
of you. I know you're a high-school girl and I'm only a 
paintner, but I have money from home and I’ll give up 
work and study to be a doctor — anything you like 
best ” He paused, flushing all over his large face. 

Somehow Minnie was not surprised. Not that she was 
in the least prepared for the proposal; it simply had no 
meaning to her. 

He continued to plead his cause by telling her that it 
would be a solution to her struggles ; he would carry her 
about in his arms, she would be precious as gold to him. 
And as he spoke, sunshine flooded her horizon. She 


298 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 
» 

began to draw pictures of a kingdom of four rooms fur- 
nished in green plush in which she reigned; and she ex- 
perienced a sense of peace and comfort. Her silence en- 
couraged Louis who finally asked: “What have you to 
lose ? I will care for you as no one in the world would. 
And if you wish it, if you think it nicer, I will go 
with you to see your mother. . . 

“No, indeed!” 

“Then you answer !” 

All over again he painted in rosy colors all the pleas- 
ures of a home ; of being forever through with shops and 
foremen; of doing a little housework, a little cooking, a 
little marketing, and then being free as a queen. 

At each picture Minnie felt closer to the kingdom of 
heaven. 

“When?” she asked. 

He could hardly believe his ears. 

“Any time — right away,” he replied with great vivac- 
ity. He felt more excited than he thought he ever could. 

“All right,” she said simply. 

How Louis “the paintner” trembled with joy! 

Though it was midnight when they returned, he 
brought the Argushes out of bed to tell his news. 
Their gladness took such boisterous forms of expression 
that neighbors were alarmed. Some suspected thieves, 
others fire, but the sound of laughter allayed their fears. 
Mrs. Argush rummaged in the closet for a chipped 
saucer; finding it, she threw it to the floor and smashed 
it, shouting “maseltov! maseltov!” upon which her spouse 
commented that she “was going crazy with joy.” From 
a secret region under the sink he brought out a bottle of 
whisky and passed drinks to the ‘‘long life and happi- 
ness” of the new couple! The little man beamed and 


INDEPENDENCE 


299 


dimpled, laughed and slapped Louis on the back. Mrs. 
Argush, on the other hand, assured Louis that she felt 
about Minnie as her own daughter, and her pride and 
satisfaction in having found such a grand match for her 
was boundless. She kissed Minnie and danced her around 
the room ; she embraced and kissed Louis, saying she was 
living over again the joy of her own engagement. Upon 
which her husband took her in his arms ; petted her and 
called her “my old one.” Mrs. Argush’s eyes filled with 
tears. 

Boorish Louis, full of happy emotions, red and uncom- 
fortable, with no place for his hands and feet, sat with 
a silly smile on his face while a thousand thoughts ran 
riot in his head. He thanked them. He wanted to beg 
Mrs. Argush to instruct Minnie in the ways of married 
life, but he held himself back. He wanted to kiss Min- 
nie, but he held himself back. Indeed, he was so con- 
fused that Mr. Argush took pity on him. “Nu, chusen,” 
he said, “the bride is tired. You will be together long 
enough. Let her go to sleep now.” 

Minnie lived through the whirlwind in a daze. It all 
seemed remote, the hilarity absurd, and Louis’ having 
told the Argushes absurd. She was mute, annoyed, puz- 
zled and a stranger. When Louis rose to go she was 
infinitely relieved. 

Louis was at the door saying good-night. 

Minnie was seated. 

“Nu, kalle — see what a child she is! Aren’t you going 
to see your lover out ?” Mrs. Argush cried. 

Minnie rose, surprised that this was expected of her 
and annoyed with Mrs. Argush. She walked over to 
Louis. He stood holding the door-knob, blushing and 
embarrassed ; a helpless look in his eyes, the meaning of 


3° o 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


which was telegraphed to Mrs. Argush, brought the re- 
ply: 

“That’s all right — that’s all right.” She nodded her 
head knowingly. “I’ll teach her ” 

Mr. Argush burst out laughing. He slapped his wife 
on her pudgy shoulder. Louis went out. Mrs. Argush 
beckoned to Minnie to follow him. 

In the hall Louis, in a low, shamed voice, asked for 
a kiss. She drew away. 

“Oh, no!” How she wished he and the Argushes 
wouldn’t bother her! 

Louis stepped closer ; he looked down from his greater 
height upon the slip of a girl, shaking as with cold. 

“But we’re engaged,” he pleaded. 

She drew farther away. He took hold of her arm. 

“Just one,” he begged and seemed so eager, so anxious, 
that she consented. 

He kissed her once, hard, so that the Argushes, peep- 
ing through the crack of the door, burst into a simul- 
taneous laugh. Louis, startled, walked quickly off with- 
out even bidding Minnie good-by. 


XX 

The next day Minnie meditated upon her new position. 
She was going to be married to Louis the “paintner.” She 
no longer needed to worry about Olga Chemin’s dis- 
missal ; and she didn’t have to look for work in a shop. 
What would her people say if they knew she was going 
to be married ? What would Olga say ? How funny that 
just when she and Gregory were getting to be friendly 


INDEPENDENCE 


30 t 

the whole upset should come. Was anybody going to 
marry Gregory, too ? She wished she could marry Greg- 
ory instead of Louis. Maybe she would. Some people, 
like her mother, married twice. She hoped if she ever 
had children she would not neglect them even if she 
married a second time. Louis hadn’t kissed her like 
Joe, so that his teeth touched hers. If Gregory kissed 
her, would he kiss her like Louis or like Joe? She 
wished he had kissed her. She would have liked to 
know. 

She walked aimlessly through the streets, feeling re- 
mote from herself and remote from everything around 
her. It was so queer not to be full of worries — the worry 
of having to keep secret the card-playing from the Ar- 
gushes, the worry of having to look for work in a shop, 
the worry of dreading a foreman. She missed something, 
as one misses the nuisance of an umbrella after a spell 
of rain. And everything she did seemed purposeless. 
She was bound for no definite destination, nothing about 
her held any interest, she was cheerless, lonely, and felt 
like crying. Her limbs ached. She was tired. She 
thought of little Beckie, and grew homesick. She thought 
of her mother, and grew angry, she thought of Louis and 
felt afraid, she thought of the Argushes and wished she 
did not need to see them soon again. 

In an effort to make things seem more real, she shook 
off her thoughts and looked around, at the people, the 
houses, the shops. She happened to be standing in front 
of one of the cheaper class of department stores, Grin- 
dem & Gold, and looked in through the glass doors at the 
humming activity inside. Something — she could not have 
told what — drew her in. A throng of people were hur- 


302 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


rying to and fro. The store was seething with the ani- 
mation of the Christmas season. 

The Christmas season ! The “rush” season ! All were 
busy. 

Her heart leaped with its old ambition. Work in an 
office! She tingled. Resolutely she advanced farther 
into the store and approached a floorwalker, who directed 
her to the manager’s office. 

Grindem & Gold’s kindly Employer of Labor contem- 
plated the girl with a bit of amusement as she earnestly 
set forth her qualifications to do office work. “I’m a high- 
school girl and I’m very good in penmanship.” 

He looked into space and stroked his beard as if in 
debate with himself. 

“Will you be willing to work evenings until Christ- 
mas ?” 

A thrill of excited exultation sent the blood to her 
head. Maybe work in an office at last ! Leaning forward 
eagerly and quite forgetting the superiority of the ad- 
dressed, she cried : 

“Oh, sure, if it’s in an office ” She remained in an 

expectant attitude, her mouth slightly open, as if her 
very life depended upon the man’s reply. 

“Well,” he pretended to demur, attempting to hide a 
smile, “sure you won’t fall asleep?” 

“No, sir !” Minnie solemnly assured him and leaned 
back in her chair, her manner seeming to add: “If that’s 
all you’re afraid of, you needn’t be.” 

“All right,” he said with a smile, “we’ll start you on 
three dollars a week and give you a raise if you’re con- 
scientious !” 

Minnie held out her hands for a fraction of a moment 


INDEPENDENCE 


303 


like a child receiving a gift. Her heart sang: “Fm so 
happy ! so happy ! so happy !” 

“Come with me,” said the man, who had another er- 
rand to take him the same way, so that this time, when 
she could have run up many stairs with the sprightliness 
of the happy, she was conducted into an elevator ! What 
a contrary way life has of managing itself ! 

XXI 

Among the Grindem & Gold Department Store em- 
ployees of four weeks’ standing and more a Great Im- 
petus existed, the promise of a Christmas gift equal to 
one week’s wages. The men and women and little boys 
and little girls applied themselves to their labors as if to 
earn their way to a very heaven. They sweated and they 
toiled for the Luscious Bait. 

At ten at night heads of salespeople were still bent 
over counters, cash boys and cash girls still raced up. and 
down aisles in pursuit of floorwalkers, parcels, change of 
coin. The eyes of all were glassy with the excitement 
and the foul air. 

In the auditing department, busiest of all, the clerks 
stayed at work until midnight ! It was only for a short 
time, only until Christmas, and with a week’s extra wages 
as the reward, who would think of complaining? Now 
and then a girl fainted, or began to cry for no reason at 
all ; a boy or a man suddenly felt a desperate need for 
a glass of water. But it would all soon be over; there 
were only ten days before Christmas. 

The department store, in its lively conscience about 
keeping its employees working overtime, provided evening 
meals gratis. Every few nights the employees were sent 


304 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


for a treat into the store’s regular dining-room ; on other 
nights sandwiches were handed around and each employee 
was allowed a half hour of respite. There were some who 
ate ravenously, but, alas, not Minnie! One does not so 
readily overcome a sacred prejudice against the hog. 
The home of the Argushes was kept “kosher in her 
own home Minnie had been brought up in adherence to 
the “kosher,” from which Sarah, for all her religious 
skepticism, never deviated. So how could she promptly 
fall on the neck, so to speak, of the non-kosher, and de- 
vour it? The usual ham sandwiches were certainly out 
of the question, and the meals served in the dining-room 
did not present a religious aspect either, while the other 
foods had strange names and looked strange. 

Upon breakfasts of nothing and lunches of wurst and 
bread and mustard came suppers of nothing. But, then, 
for Minnie, too, it was only for a short time. Besides, 
working in an office was nourishment to the soul. 

The days passed. It was Christmas Eve. At six 
o’clock a dead hush fell upon the Season’s Rush. Men 
and women dropped and sent up a prayer of thanks. 
Lines of employees formed before the windows of the 
paying tellers. Boys and girls giggled nervously. All 
were wearily but happily anticipating the Luscious Bait. 

Minnie, almost too tired to remain upright on her feet, 
stood in line among the others. The air in the store was 
so warm and thick that she had the sensation of breath- 
ing in a solid. Her head every once in a while swam 
dizzily; she would brace herself with the thought that 
to-morrow was a holiday — and the Doubled Wage ! She 
had long wanted a gray, ready-to-wear skirt, and she had 
long needed a pair of shoes. Though Louis had coaxed, 
she had refused to buy these with his money. 


INDEPENDENCE 


305 

The paying teller called her name and handed her an 
envelope. 

“Thank you/' she said and stepped out of the line. A 
few feet away she opened the flimsy yellow envelope and 
found — three dollars enclosed ! 

She turned back, disregarding the next in line. 

“Please, mister,” she cried nervously, “it's a mis- 
take ” 

The paying teller turned to her. 

“What’s a mistake?” 

“It’s only three dollars.” 

The paying teller took the envelope from her extended 
hand and looked up his records. Minnie stood trembling 
and throbbing. 

“Say, what do you think,” he threw out from behind 
the bars of his cage, “we’re giving money away here? 
You’re only here three weeks and two days. You came 
too late.” 

Too late! Minnie stood condemned, dumfounded. So 
it took four weeks in full to earn the Double Wage ! She 
had never expected that they would count those few days. 
She stood rooted to the spot. Several girls giggled. A 
boy called : “Say, sissy, get a move on.” She glanced 
hastily down the length of the line and flushed hotly. 
She had made a fool of herself ! 

Oh, to hide or run away! But quick escape was im- 
possible. She had still to get her hat and coat from the 
seventh floor. Afraid that in the elevator she might en- 
counter someone who had seen her make a fool of her- 
self, she walked up the seven flights of stairs — ran them, 
in fact. When she reached the top landing, darkness 
suddenly closed down on her, the floor slipped from be- 


3°6 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


neath her feet. The next she knew she was lying in the 
auditing office, and, oh, how her body ached ! 

*Tm so tired !” she moaned. She ached as if she had 
been beaten. She turned her head away from the woman 
manager, who had detected in Minnie “a bright little 
girl,” and was gently administering spirits of ammonia. 

“Does the little girl feel better?” she asked. 

“I’m so tired !” 

“You , ll rest all day to-morrow, dear.” 

An hour later a very pale Minnie, unsteady on her 
feet, was putting on her hat and coat. 

“I hope you’ll be all right and will come back after 
Christmas,” said the manager. 

But Minnie never came back, and no one in the store 
ever tried to discover why. No cog in any machinery is 
dispensed with so lightly as is the human cog in the ma- 
chinery of human affairs. 

XXII 

Leaving Grindem & Gold’s, Minnie, her nerves so on 
edge that every sound felt like a lash on her bruised 
body, retreated to a quiet side street lined with brown- 
stone houses, which told of a past aristocracy. She 
could hardly drag herself along and soon realized she was 
going to faint again. She gave a desperate glance around. 
A doctor’s sign caught her eye. Without reflection she 
labored up the high stoop and pulled the bell. A nurse in 
uniform opened the door upon a little girl in a heap in 
the vestibule. 

When Minnie regained consciousness she found her- 
self on a bed with Doctor Joel and Miss Grayson at her 
side, talking in low voices and smiling kindly into her 


INDEPENDENCE 


30 7 

eyes. The doctor, giving Miss Grayson instructions to 
let her rest, went out of the room. 

Aching, weary and sick, Minnie asked no questions. 
She kept her eyes closed, occasionally moved from side 
to side, and moaned. The nurse ministered to her in one 
small way or another. 

It seemed a long while before the doctor appeared 
again. 

“Do you feel better ?” 

“Yes, I feel all right.” Minnie fingered her hair ner- 
vously. 

“All right?” Doctor Joel smiled. She wanted to rise. 
“There, dear, no, no, just lie still.” Doctor Joel's gen- 
tleness brought a lump to Minnie’s throat. She was ripe 
for abundant emotional response to the slightest friend- 
liness. 

When he left, she turned her head to look out of the 
window, which was close to the bed. With a relaxation 
like that which she had felt when lying alone in the home 
on Gregory’s cot, she remarked what a clean, quiet street 
this was and what a contrast the atmosphere of repose to 
the hubbub of Henry and Rivington and Madison Streets. 
Soon the sense of relief passed. Thoughts began to as- 
sail her. The women passing seemed so different from 
Mrs. Argush, so much quieter, not as if they were for- 
ever talking, forever bustling, and the men not as if they 
were insisting upon girls marrying them. Louis, disap- 
pointed that she had taken work instead of beginning 
wedding preparations, had tried every night to make her 
understand that her conduct was reprehensible. Then, 
too, he was so demonstrative that Minnie was constantly 
reminded with horror of the doctor, and when Louis 
insisted that since they were engaged his behavior was 


308 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


all right, she was completely dismayed. To her even 
greater consternation, Mrs. Argush not only upheld 
Louis, but told Minnie it was her duty to respond, and 
the exactions of marriage would be still greater. The 
girl had a nightmare sense of being pursued by some- 
thing ugly and monstrous. 

A stabbing pain in the region of her heart recalled her 
from these thoughts. She stirred and moaned. 

“What is it, dear? ,, asked Miss Grayson. 

“Nothing.” 

Perhaps, it occurred to Minnie, she was staying too 
long. 

‘Til dirty the bed,” she muttered, bringing her thumb 
to her mouth and sitting up, her sensitiveness overcom- 
ing her weakness. But only for an instant. Her heart 
began to pound and her breath came hard and short. 

“It’s all right — you won’t soil the bed.” The nurse 
gently forced her dowm. 

The doctor came in and conferred with the nurse in 
whispers, then approached the bedside and asked Minnie 
her name. 

“Where do you live, Mildred? I’ll take you to your 
mother in my carriage, yes?” 

Home ! Mother ! The Argush kitchen ! Louis the 
paintner! . . . No, no, no, she wouldn’t go home — she 
wouldn’t go to the Argush kitchen — she wouldn’t go to 
Louis! She hated — hated — hated it all. She could not 
stand it. 

Setting her lips tight, stiffening in every limb and 
fiber, she said slowly and decide*dly that she had no 
mother or father or home; she had lived with strangers 
who had moved away and she was free to be disposed 
of as the doctor saw fit. 


INDEPENDENCE 


309 


Not a quiver, not a tear. Hers was not the spirit of 
the beggar wanting to rouse pity. It was the spirit of 
desperate resolution. Like her mother before her, who 
had reached out for the theft of a hat band, Minnie 
reached out for the theft of a fresh start. 

Her manner discountenanced disbelief and furthei 
questioning. A remark or two, and it was decided that 
she stay until Dr. Joel find room for her in a “nice place 
where there were other nice girls and she would have a 
fine time romping and playing and jumping until she got 
to be a big, strong girl.” 

“Am I sick?” 

The doctor looked down upon her with fatherly ten- 
derness. He nodded his head affirmatively. 

“What’s the matter with me?” 

There was such an air of maturity and independence 
about this child, that Dr. Joel felt he did not have to con- 
ceal her true condition from her. 

Heart trouble! It sounded far worse than she felt 
herself to be. After a little reflection, she said sulkily, 
as though unwilling to believe him : 

“I was well yesterday.” 

“You were not well yesterday.” Dr. Joel shook his 
head emphatically. He added softly, as if he meant 
no one to hear : “They live against all the laws of nature 
all their lives, and when they get sick they think it hap- 
pened over night !” 

Minnie started. “Against all the lazvs of nature!” 
The scene of Mira, her mother, her sick father, Doctor 
Levin, flashed upon her mind. Her father had died from 
“living against all the laws of nature!” 

Dr. Joel and Miss Grayson were startled by a shrill, 
hysterical shriek, followed by another and another in 


3io 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


quick succession. Minnie had seen a hideous apparition. 
She clung to the doctor and the nurse. 

“Don’t — don’t make me go back !” she cried. 


XXIII 

The Helina Heimath was a vast, elegant structure, as 
if with forethought stuck in a suburb away from the eye 
of society that society might not have flaunted before it 
its completed work, humanity wrecked, beaten. 

Its chief directors were two men linked in philanthropy 
as in business, Y. Nat (the gentleman’s idiosyncratic ab- 
breviation of Nathan) Grindem and Owen Gold. 

Carved upon a stone plate above the entrance door 
were the words, “For Incurables,” which seemed to say 
in their implacableness that here was merely a wayside 
inn on the road to the hereafter. Immediately inside the 
building one felt the obligatoriness of hush and involun- 
tarily assumed a solemn demeanor and subdued one’s 
tones to a whisper. In the heart of the building, away 
from its outward stateliness and corridored dignity, one 
came upon a desolate barrenness, a conscientious absence 
of all non-essentials, an absolute lack of aestheticism and 
pretty comforts, which at once proclaimed it to all the 
senses a place for poor people. Not a single cushioned 
chair or cosy corner; not a single sign of ease or warm 
decoration, as if these had been omitted for prudential 
reasons — because the inmates might come to look upon 
them as necessities and make exaggerated demands in- 
stead of appreciating what they were receiving. Every- 
thing bespoke stability, practicability, to the very dishes 
of the coarsest heavy stoneware. And pervading the 


INDEPENDENCE 31 1 

whole place was the smell of the poor, that unmistakable 
sourish smell. 

Instead of the peaceful harmony due the invalid for 
his environment there was a seething turmoil, inevitable 
in the promiscuous herding together of people, which 
came to a hush only when it spent itself or on occasions 
of detecting eyes. 

The first weeks, when Minnie was confined to bed, she 
was too ill to make observations, too close to the old life 
for other thought. In the way of invalids, her mind 
dwelt upon herself. The fear that Louis might discover 
her whereabouts haunted her persistently. (But the poor 
“paintner,” who lost the paramount inspiration of his 
life, never learned what became of his kalle. And as 
for the Argushes, they congratulated Louis upon his 
escape from a meen mudner mensch (a queer person) ; 
for that, they were now convinced all over again, was 
what Minnie was). She also lived in constant dread 
that Dr. Joel would discover she had not told him the 
truth when she had said she was an orphan. From her 
own point of view, she felt she had told the truth ; spirit- 
ually she was an orphan ; but she sensed vaguely that oth- 
ers would see no justification for her feeling so, that they 
could imbibe only the obvious. 

As her health improved her mood of introspection, 
naturally, passed and she began to observe the panorama 
before her. All sorts of distorted forms upon beds, all 
degrees of emaciation, all shades of pallor, all sorts of 
maimed upon wheel chairs, or struggling along by the 
aid of sticks or crutches. 

Like herself they were veterans of the war of life. 
Minnie knew it ; she knew they had worked hard like her- 
self, had eaten suppers alternate nights, or less, had gone 


312 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


breakfastless. They had lived against all the laws of 
nature! But it reached her understanding only dimly 
that behind her destruction and theirs was the whole of 
life with its ebb and flow, of which she and they were 
the scum it threw off, and she perceived only dimly that 
this vast charity was as much a monument to human 
treachery as to human goodness, though she realized 
there was something not exactly fitting in the positions 
that Grindem and Gold held in this philanthropy when 
employees in their large store were given wages that 
necessitated “living against all the laws of nature.” But 
exactly wherein lay the unfittingness or how it was to be 
remedied, Minnie did not know. 

There was one tiling, however, about which she was 
clear and definitely bitter; the ladies of the Aid Society 
of the Helina Heimath, a group of rich women who came 
at regular intervals to bestow small gifts; an orange, a 
brick of ice cream, a piece of cake, a cup of cocoa. Their 
clothes were always of an expensive, subdued suitability, 
of an elegant propriety ; they always extolled the “view” 
from the windows of the Heimath as “purfectly lovely,” 
as if they were cracking up a broken toy to a child. It 
seemed to delight them immensely that the bed linens 
were very white, and they seemed to want to impress 
upon the inmates the fact that they had much to be grate- 
ful for. “Why, if they think it is so lovely, don't they 
come here when they are sick?” Minnie would think. 
Yet when one of the ladies stopped to have a chat with 
her, she was surprised to find she liked the lady and 
would be ashamed of her previous hard feelings. “I 
guess I'm jealous,” she would say to herself. Her eyes 
would fill with tears, and her young heart would ache 
with a vague disappointment. She was, as a matter of 


INDEPENDENCE 


3i3 


fact, jealous; she had not conceived of dependence in 
connection with herself ; when she had pictured herself 
a “grown-up lady’” it had been as one exactly like these 
who now patronized her. She resented her failure; 
she was disappointed in life. 

One visiting day, when the inmates were sitting round 
the large ward with affectionate relatives by their sides 
and bundles of better eatables than the Helina Heimath 
afforded spread open on their laps, a great homesickness 
came over her. No one visited her or cared for her; no 
one would ever come to see her. Was there really no one 
to come to see her? Jacob sprang to her mind; he was 
away from home and was probably feeling as deserted as 
she. She would ask him to come. She would caution 
him not to tell any of the others. The thought possessed 
her; she grew as excited as if she had discovered a cure 
for all her heartaches. She wrote to Jacob in delirious 
haste. When she had deposited the letter in the mail box, 
she retired to the one spot of privacy the Heimath had to 
offer, the bathroom, where, sitting on the edge of the tub, 
she shed bitter tears of loneliness. 

The following Sunday, Jacob stood in the line of visi- 
tors on the street, impatient for the doors to open. His 
mind busily speculated as to the condition in which he 
would find his sister who had written that she had been 
at the hospital six months. He was worried by visions of 
her reduced to a skeleton, bedridden, in fever, moaning, 
groaning. 

Minnie stood at the window, her eyes feverishly trav- 
eling along the line of visitors until she spied her brother. 
At sight of him she quivered from top to toe. Her heart 
pounded. Would the line ever move ! She looked again 
to make sure it was he. Yes, it was. He was the only 


3M 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


one in the world who lifted his hand like that. (It was 
a warm day, and Jacob was wiping the perspiration from 
his forehead.) She felt love for him for this very 
uniqueness of gesture. The sound of “brother” brought 
a glow to her heart, a lump to her throat. Oh, if the line 
would only begin to move! At last it moved. She ran 
to the door by which Jacob would enter the ward. 

She was taller, stouter, and more fully developed than 
when she had left home, and though her hair still hung 
down her back in a plait, there was a subtle maturity and 
dignity about her. Indeed, the superintendent of the in- 
stitution, a man of portly belly and big shaggy beard, 
which lent him an air of authority, referred to her (and 
her fellow patients, imitating him, did the same) as 
“princess,” especially when she slighted her rations at 
table in accord with the dictates of her palate. 

Jacob, entering the door, fairly gasped. Sick ! Why, 
she was twice as fat as she had ever been ! He felt in- 
dignant, as if he had been duped. 

Jacob was having his own troubles. Sharing the home 
of the uncle with whom he lived was a daughter whom 
the Potter had moulded most unprepossessing. She was 
large and dark and clumsy of feature ; moreover, she had 
a foolish laugh and no brains. Jacob could not abide 
her. Since she found as little favor with young men 
other than her cousin, her mother and father were acting 
in a partnership conspiracy to palm her off on Jacob. 
They would detain him for conversation : they would en- 
courage him to the point of compulsion to take her out ; 
they would make every opportunity for his contact with 
her ; into all of which she herself entered with the great- 
est alacrity. Now, Jacob throughout his life maintained 
a sort of aloofness from people, and for him to dwell in 


INDEPENDENCE 


3 T 5 


the same house as the family was really the greatest hard- 
ship; while as for coming into actually intimate contact 
with them, especially with such an unattractive creature 
as Lena, was sheer torture. The thing disturbed him so, 
so weighed him down that you might have thought that 
he, of all people in the world, was the one whom Fate 
had singled out for martyrdom. 

Here stood Minnie, robust, after having added a week 
of great worry to his already worried mind. 

His frigid response to her eager greeting was like a 
dash of ice water. No one in the world cared a bit 
for her. She was alone, altogether alone. Her heart 
was wrung. 

She led him silently into the ward, and they sat 
down. 

“Why did you tell me you were sick? Did you think 
you had to frighten me to bring me?” 

She hesitated and smiled diffidently as she said: “I 
don’t look sick now, do I?” 

“SICK ! You look ten times better than I.” His heart 
went out in an abundance of self-pity. 

Minnie’s eyes misted. “But I was quite sick,” she said. 
“I used to faint a lot.” 

Jacob had his doubts. 

“How was it you waited until this late date, then, to 
call me?” 

“I didn’t want to tell you sooner. I waited until I was 
better on purpose, because I didn’t want you to think I 
wasn’t getting along.” 

Jacob’s soul laughed. Indeed, it was very likely that 
she would do that ! Why was she telling him now, as if 
it weren’t the same thing! Very likely that she would 
keep her troubles from folks. It took him to be silent. 


3 l6 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


There he was with worries reaching over his head say- 
ing not a word to anybody. 

“You frightened me. I thought you were dying. I 
suppose you think I have nothing else to worry about.” 

Because she had been so sure that he was as homesick 
for her as she for him, his words fell with their sharpest 
edge upon her heart. Her color rose. She was outraged. 
How much she had suffered without ever even dreaming 
of calling any of them to her aid ! And Jacob was wholly 
distorting the spirit of her invitation, ready to charge her 
with having no consideration. How she hated him ! Her 
self-control snapped. 

“If you are so sorry you came,” she burst out, “you 
had better go right back. You’ll wait all your life before 
I will want to see you again. I hate you.” She rose from 
her chair, facing him with fine dignity. 

He rose, too. After he had come all that way, after 
he had made the sacrifice of refusing an invitation to 
join one of his friends in an outing, after he had worried 
about her all the week, she had the impudence to insult 
him! He dashed out. 

From the Helina Heimath he went straight to the fam- 
ily and delivered himself of his grievance. 

“She chased me out,” was his description of the finale 
of his visit. 

Sarah had given many an hour’s worrisome thought to 
Minnie during the months that had passed since the chil- 
dren had seen her and the earth afterward, as it seemed, 
had swallowed her up. She never walked the streets 
without keeping a constant lookout; perhaps she would 
meet her here — perhaps she would see her there. Once 
she happened to be in a millinery shop when the pro- 
prietor sent a message to a Minnie in the work-room be 


INDEPENDENCE 


317 


hind the shop. It might be her Minnie! She insisted, 
without explaining why she did so, upon being let into 
the work-room. It was not her Minnie. Her heart sank. 

At last Jacob came with word of her child. 

She made light of his complaint. “So long we missed 
her, a brother ought to be glad to know his sister is 
alive.” 

Sarah was changed. The double role of wife to a 
second husband and mother to his stepchildren had re- 
awakened the qualities of patience and endurance in her. 
The pain and anxiety of witnessing the conflict of these 
two elements, both of whom engaged her love, had sub- 
dued her, roused her again, as it were, out of self into 
the wife and mother. Success of the bands business was 
subordinated to peace. She no more indulged herself in 
bursts of anger and faultfinding; instead she went about 
as pacifier and mollifier, begging the children to avoid 
irritating Leopold, and Leopold to be patient with the 
children. With a tear or a sigh she would tacitly remind 
him of the two runaways, about whom Leopold, in real- 
ity, also brooded. 

Since Jacob vowed he was done with Minnie, Sarah 
insisted that Beckie and Ida go to see her the very next 
Sunday. They, too, brought back news that she looked 
robust and had developed into a “regular lady,” and 
Sarah shed tears of thanksgiving. 

For weeks she went about with the one feeling that if 
she could see Minnie, she would have nothing more to 
wish for. But though she had the impulse every Sunday 
to join Beckie and Ida on their now regular weekly visits, 
something in her heart held her back. She hated to ad- 
mit to herself how guilty she must seem in the eyes of 
the too-harsh Minnie. She had sacrificed an oldest 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


318 

daughter for a husband. If the penalty was grief, she 
was paying it generously. How hard children could be! 
After all, if Minnie were not a child, she would under- 
stand ; she would not be so hard on her mother. 

One Sunday Ida and Beckie, who wanted to go on a 
trip to Fort George with some of Ida’s schoolmates, asked 
to be let off from visiting Minnie. Sarah first used per- 
suasion, telling them it was their duty to visit their sister, 
then, as she failed to achieve the desired result, she burst 
into a volume of complaint, contrary to the present stand- 
ards, charging them with being thoughtless of Minnie, 
who would be waiting for them and would “cry her eyes 
out.” But the children insisted they had a right to have 
fun one Sunday once in a while and went their way. 

Left alone, as Leopold had gone to a lodge meeting, 
Sarah abandoned herself to a fit of weeping. Was ever 
mother given so many causes for pain as she? Always 
she was torn by a thousand miseries. The children really 
did have a right to take one Sunday for recreation. Yet 
Minnie would wait for them and she would doubtless be 
heartbroken. Sarah sighed and sighed as she went about 
the house dully. Life was too bitter, life was too bitter. 
It was tears, tears, tears, if not for want of bread then 
for other things, never had she known a day free from 
care or sadness. 

Then her heart was carried on a new wave of thought 
to Minnie. Minnie, too, was having a hard life. She 
had been sick. Many things, doubtless, had made her 
sick. Child that she was, she had carried her resolution 
to be independent to the very limit, until it had made her 
sick. Goodness knew where she had lived, what she had 
eaten, whether in the winter she had worn warm under- 
wear. Her Minnie was to have a life like hers — full of 


INDEPENDENCE 


319 


struggle, full of suffering. Because her nature was the 
very same as her mother’s — firm, determined to fight the 
fates — the fates would play the game with her. She 
could not stand it another day — not another minute — 
she had to see the child — her oldest girl — dear to her as 
the others. 

She went into the bedroom, rummaged in a bureau 
drawer for a fresh handkerchief, and stood a few mo- 
ments weeping into it, then pulled down her shirtwaist, 
brushed her hair, put on her hat and walked resolutely 
out. 

Though she took the car that she had heard the chil- 
dren say went to the Helina Heimath, she rose nervously 
time and again to ask the conductor if they had not al- 
ready passed the place — it was taking so long. But when 
finally a big voice called out Helina Heimath, Sarah re- 
mained seated, her mind 3 thousand leagues away, occu- 
pied with Jacob’s fate at Minnie’s hands. Would Min- 
nie chase her out, too? She felt as if she could not 
stand it, as if her heart must break if that came to pass. 
With such a wilful girl as Minnie, who could tell what 
her imagined grievances could not lead her to do? Per- 
haps she so blamed her only mother that she could slap 
her face. God ! God ! what a hard life ! 

“Wake up, missus,” the conductor roared, “ain’t you 
been asking all day for the Helina Heimath?” 

Sarah blinked. Hastily gathering together three purple 
asters, which she had stopped to buy for Minnie, she 
scrambled out. 

She saw a huge, gray building. She stopped short. 
The place seemed familiar. She looked at the front 
door. Yes, that was the entrance. Good God ! the coun- 
try ! the place where the girl’s father had died! How 


3 2 ° 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


could one bear all! The cry went through her soul in 
weird minor notes like a wind dying out. She remem- 
bered instantly with what a heavy heart, with what la- 
bored footsteps she had ascended that same stoop be- 
fore. She lived through again every sensation of fright, 
every sensation of grief, all the torture, and misery, and 
despair following Elias’s death. . . . Minnie was here ! — 
here where her father had died! . . . What a life — 
what a life! . . . She felt as if she could not bear an- 
other moment of it; as if she would find comfort in 
disappearing under the stones of the pavement. She 
kept her head bowed and her eyes, with the look in them 
of a soul in torture, riveted to the ground. 

Ainilessly, with a lassitude pathetic in one so full of 
energy, she walked round and round and round the 
block thinking, marvelling, almost like a child, at the com- 
plexity of her life, how from girlhood on everything had 
always happened to involve her in a fate darker than that 
of any of the women she had known. Even Mira, that 
red-headed, coarse Mira, had fared so much better than 
she. What had she ever done to deserve it all — not to be 
a mother in peace, not to be a wife in peace; and to have 
known such poverty as she had known, to have struggled, 
struggled for whom more than for her children? — And 
now her oldest daughter, the oldest daughter in whom all 
mothers took the greatest pride, was landed in a home 
for incurables, in the same home where her father had 
been at the time of their desperate poverty ! As if Min- 
nie needed to have had such a thing befall her; if only the 
girl had been reasonably tolerant, reasonably obedient, 
reasonably agreeable. What an unlucky woman she was, 
what an unlucky woman! 

She passed the entrance door for visitors again, as she 


INDEPENDENCE 


321 


had a number of times, without noticing that the people 
had not only been in but had also come out and the place 
was already closed to visitors. She stood turning the 
knob of the gate, looking helplessly up at the mute struc- 
ture. A hand motioned to her from a window in a wing 
of the building, directing her to the front entrance. 

She ascended the stoop of old. Something in her heart 
moaned, and such a heavy sigh escaped her, such a 
hunted look was on her face that the doorkeeper in- 
formed her with especial courtesy that the visiting-hour 
was over, and even added that he was sorry. 

Sarah slunk off like a beaten animal, while Minnie, 
having watched and waited for her two sisters like a suf- 
ferer for relief, locked herself in the bathroom and shed 
the tears of the forlorn. No one cared for her. They 
had come a few weeks and now they meant to come no 
more. It was too much “bother.” Nobody loved her. 

XXIV 

Another month, and the Heimath’s gift of an oppor- 
tunity for proper living had rendered Minnie a remark- 
able contradiction to its “incurable” character. She 
looked hale and hearty. Indeed, the board of directors 
and the Ladies of the Aid Society, upheld in their opinion 
by the superintendent, who took his clue from the medical 
end of the establishment, began to think seriously of dis- 
charging her. 

In earnest consultation assembled, the wielders of des- 
tinies in the Helina Heimath, the Directors and the La- 
dies, discussed what to do with Minnie now that she was 
ready to be discharged. 

Minnie Mendel, aged sixteen and a half, unkindly 


322 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


treated at home by a stepfather — where could she be 
placed to live? A number of propositions were consid- 
ered, and finally the suggestion that she be lodged at the 
Alpha Home for Working Girls was put in the form of 
a motion, seconded, duly debated, and carried. Next 
came the problem of her livelihood. The Alpha Home 
required three dollars a week for her maintenance. Had 
the girl a trade? No. There followed silent interroga- 
tion of eyes, then a portly gentleman of excellent decorum 
and without doubt of a good heart, else why should he 
have left his easy chair at home for the mission of alms, 
whose every gesture indicated that he was accustomed 
to handling matters of far greater import than the mere 
placing of a girl at a trade, offered his metal establish- 
ment as a solution. This proposal, too, was moved and 
seconded and carried; and the case of Mildred Mendel 
was dismissed; there were other cases up that needed 
similar consideration. 

The announcement of her discharge was a shock at 
first to Minnie, filling her with terror of a repetition of 
her old life. Then she was glad. It was impossible that 
she would have to live again in a kitchen on the East 
Side, or work in a shop. They knew it had been this that 
had made her sick, and after having gone to all the 
trouble of curing her, what sense would there be in send- 
ing her back to such conditions? Yet she had relapses 
to fear. What, what if they were, after all, to make her 
go back to a shop, to a store and to the East Side ! She 
had no profession or trade and she had no money. What 
would become of her? 

At night when the other patients in the ward were 
asleep, her eyes wandered over their forms of divers dis- 
tortions, bedridden for the rest of life perhaps ; and even 


INDEPENDENCE 


323 

though her heart ached for them, it gladdened for her- 
self, that she was better, that she could leave the bed 
of charity for the world of independence. “But only if 
I don’t have to work in a shop — only if I could have a 
room for myself in a clean place ! Dear me ! that isn’t 
asking for so much ! So many people have it, why can’t 
I ? I would be so happy !” Here the tears would come 
and she would have to draw the covers over her head to 
keep the others from hearing her weep. 

As if in answer to her prayer, one of the ladies of the 
Aid Society came to her one day and after stroking her 
hair, which she proclaimed was arranged in a pompadour 
that was “just the thing” and smiling down upon her 
benignly, told her that this experience of hers was to be 
followed by one at least equally as wonderful, that she 
was to live in the Alpha Home for Working Girls, “a 
nice, clean, lovely home for girls, a purfectly splendid 
place.” 

The girl’s heart turned a somersault for joy. Hadn’t 
she just known that the past could not repeat itself ! 

For days she trod on air, her joy expressing itself in 
dreams of coming back to the Heimath on visits with a 
large bundle of foodstuffs, cheese, smoked salmon, sweet 
butter, dill pickles, olives, herring. Each patient was to 
receive her favorite delicacy. She would live through 
scene after scene of the sort until she fell into a state of 
delicious eagerness for the time to arrive when she would 
be leaving. 

One day word came from the superintendent’s quar- 
ters that she was to accompany an attendant to Maiden 
Lane to make arrangements for a position. 

As if by magic the heavens turned suddenly pitch- 
black. Minnie’s heart stood still, then hammered and 


3 2 4 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


hammered. Oh, God, not a shop! Not a store! Not a 
shop ! When her mind interfered with common sense to 
ask what else she was prepared to do, she wanted to 
strike at it with her fists. What right had it to come in 
with its practical complacency; If only it would be an 
office, not a store, not a shop! Oh, if only it would be 
an office! Maybe now there were offices that did not 
always want shorthand. She could put her hair up and 
look more like “a grown-up lady.” 

Trembling with nervousness she lent herself to some 
half-dozen hands and as many contrary opinions for 
dressing up. One woman tied her hair with a red ribbon, 
another one’s opinion prevailed that black was more suit- 
able. One told her to wear a one-piece dress, another a 
waist and skirt. 

The patients stood at the window, some half-dozen of 
them, waving her good-by, envious ancf sympathetic. 
When she turned out of sight, they moved away, sighing, 
already wondering when she would come back and 
whether she would procure the position. Probably it was 
“by a director” — no small honor. Indeed, one needed to 
be “smart,” “an American one,” to aspire to such a place. 

Three hours later Minnie returned, her lips tight-set, 
her face pale. The friendly patients came eagerly for- 
ward. With a single glance she frightened them away 
and walked fast and stiffly to her bed, where she stood 
for a moment rigid, then fell upon it in a heap, shrieking 
hysterically. The medical profession was brought hurry- 
ing upon the scene. She was questioned. 

“I WONT work in a shop! I WONT! Pd sooner 
die !” she cried. 

Her sobs were the tune of a deep hatred that was grip- 
ping her soul, a hatred of the circumstances that made 


INDEPENDENCE 


325 


her subject to the will of others. The Helina Heimath 
suddenly loomed up as the epitome of all horror, as a 
dumping ground for ruined humans, and a soul repair 
shop for the conscience-stricken rich that they might not 
lose their chance also in heaven. She hated it — hated 
her dependence. She swore she would be a dependent no 
more, never in her life again. 

That their good work should not be undone, the author- 
ities of the Heimath readily agreed that some plan should 
be devised more in accord with the girl’s own desires. 
She was consulted. She wanted to learn shorthand. 
And shorthand she was taught — by Sarah’s “golden 
lady.” 

The first person Minnie had met when Dr. Joel 
brought her to the Helina Heimath was Ella Liebman, 
who was now secretary there. It had instantly sprung 
into Minnie’s mind — and greatly worried her — that here 
was someone who knew of her past and would disillusion 
Dr. Joel concerning her orphanhood. One day she made 
a clean breast of it. 

“Miss Liebman,” she said, “I told Dr. Joel I have no 
mother. The truth is, my mother married a man who, 
though he was recommended by friends ” 

Miss Liebman laughed, long and merrily, but in so in- 
dulgent a tone and with such an affectionate look, that 
Minnie went on: 

“And he turned out very mean and I left home ” 

Miss Liebman divined the girl’s fears. 

“We understand. Don’t worry,” she said. 

Thereafter she became Minnie's “golden lady.” 
















































































. 





































- 


















































































































h 


















- 






















PART II 

SARAH’S DAUGHTER 




























































PART II 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 

Minnie sat at the small table in her small, neat room 
in the Alpha Home for Working Girls, a pad of paper, 
ink and a newspaper before her. She wrote : 

“I beg leave to make application for the position of 
stenographer as per your advertisement in this morning’s 
New York World ” 

A novel sense of dignity warmed her soul. A full- 
fledged stenographer! An office to be her objective — and 
nothing in the way to bar her. What different times from 
those of the Titanic Biscuit Company! Those awful 
days! She sighed. Though those times seemed already 
in the distant past, thought of them made one sigh — 
made one’s gladness in a present seem a bit lop-sided 
somehow. “How could mama have been so indifferent !” 
she wondered as she sat chewing the end of her pen- 
holder, her eyes staring into vacancy. “I might have 
been ruined by Joe — by that doctor. I might have mar- 
ried Louis. What a baby I was!” Her sophisticated 
companions at the Heimath had taught Minnie things. 

The summons bell rang in the hall and in a moment a 
girl’s voice called: “Mildred Mendel, the superintendent 
wants you in her office.” 

Fifteen minutes later Minnie was seated in the street 
car all excited because she was on the way to see about 
a position as stenographer which the superintendent had 
329 


330 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


thought she could fill. ... In an hour she came back 
bubbling over with happiness, for she had been found 
satisfactory and had been engaged. At the door of the 
Alpha Home her happy bubbles broke. She was met by 
the girl who had summoned her to the superintendent's 
office, and was asked: 

“Well, did you get the position?” 

“Yes.” 

“Yes? Oh, how nice. Where — in what place?” 

In what place ? The place had not occurred to Minnie, 
somehow it had not mattered. Minnie stood for a mo- 
ment speechless. She dropped her eyes and voice : 

“Why, the Peoples Charities ” she replied. 

A queer sensation played in her breast as she made her 
way to the superintendent's office to tell the result of her 
interview. “What would mama say, I wonder !” she was 
thinking. 

* * * * * * 

Among her duties was interviewing applicants. She 
found herself the first day, while waiting for the chief 
clerk to bring her working paraphernalia, facing a room- 
ful of drab humanity in the Employment Bureau in the 
basement of the Peoples Charities building. How curi- 
ously alike they all looked — though their features were 
so different! They were scrutinizing the new “Lady” 
with a hush upon them, broken by subdued whispers, 
which marks people under constraint. In their humble 
hearts was awe, the shadow of dependence. Was it their 
obvious awe of the new personage behind the desk 
that caused Minnie to straighten up in her chair with a 
slender feeling of self-esteem? A very slender feeling 
and one that soon passed. 

“How haggard and anxious they look!” Her young 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


33 


heart ached for this lot of suffering humanity, huddled 
together in this stuffy basement. She strained her eyes 
to see them more clearly as if to bring the realness of 
themselves to themselves closer to herself. They were 
human beings just as her mother was a human being, 
who, like them, had once sat right there waiting for the 
very same thing, to be given work as if it were charity. 
She in one of their seats would seem as strange to an- 
other seated where she was. In the Helina Heimath she 
had doubtless seemed as strange to a visitor. 

The chief clerk appeared to put her to work. 

The first days of her new position were hard. Like all 
sensitive people, Minnie stood in awe of her superiors, 
was, as a consequence, easily rattled and made blunders. 
But she fought hard with herself, and if she did not over- 
come her nervousness, she at least managed to conceal it. 
She rested her elbow on the desk to steady her trembling 
hand and questioned the applicants in the lowest voice 
to keep others from detecting her shyness. 

* * * * * * 

Months passed, each day bringing a host of wretched 
human beings to the Charities doors. There were old 
faces, new faces, old tales, new tales. 

Though poverty was no secret to Minnie, she had never 
before consciously appreciated the endless sordidness 
with which it joined hands. Beginning with the physical 
ugliness to which it reduced its victims, the demon forged 
on and on tirelessly, mercilessly, driving men to desert 
women, women to loathe men, children to curse both. 

Minnie suffered. She walked about with a troubled 
face and such an abstracted manner that her co-workers 
put her down as queer, and smiled and talked about her 
in whispers. 


332 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


In her mental struggle Minnie would appeal to Miss 
Liebman. Teacher and pupil had become close friends. 
Did Miss Liebman think there was a God? Did she 
think He approved of poverty? Did she think the poor 
themselves were responsible for their poverty? But if 
they were ignorant, untrained, diseased, how could they 
be held responsible any more than a man may be held 
responsible for a hooked nose? 

Ella Liebman, who had gone through precisely such a 
period of spiritual unrest, understood and sympathized, 
but in her greater wisdom, she suggested that it was 
better not to think about such things since one never 
reached ,a conclusion. Far from satisfying, this only 
made Minnie the more restless and caused her to long 
for sympathetic companionship. 

Now and then she made advances to her fellow- work- 
ers; but if her aloofness seemed queer to them, her talk 
seemed still queerer. Did anyone ever hear of such a 
thing as whether a person deserved to be poor! A man 
was poor — sufficient explanation in itself, and the end 
of it. Did God approve of poverty? As if everything 
were not in God’s hands, including the power to make a 
man rich or poor. 

They flocked together, called Minnie a “nut” and forth- 
with took every opportunity to avoid her. And Minnie 
now avoided them with ten times the conscientiousness 
that they avoided her. 

Occasionally she tried to talk to the Alpha Home girls, 
but never felt drawn to any of them. 

But still she yearned for companionship, for someone 
with whom she could talk. A few times she tried to un- 
burden herself to Ida and Beckie, who often visited her. 
Beckie would listen even if she did not understand ; but 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


333 

Ida, who was bored and disgusted, would find pretexts 
for interrupting. Had Minnie seen the cat that just 
passed? Did she feel hot or cold? And such obvious 
boredom invariably played upon her face that Minnie, 
flushing, was reduced to silence. 

Often Minnie wondered what sort of a person Abie 
Ratkin was now grown into and whether he wondered 
the same about her. And Gregory Chernin, what was he 
like now? Did he and Abie have other girls for friends? 
A sigh. 

Late one evening, coming home from a walk, she 
passed the sitting-room and looked in enviously at the 
girls talking and laughing. Amelia Rubin, a Russian- 
Jewish shirtwaist operator, who sat next to Minnie at 
table, but to whom Minnie had paid no attention because 
of her foreignness, called to Minnie eagerly to come in. 
She was at a loss to entertain her “gentleman caller.” 

Minnie walked in shyly. 

In a broad, foreign accent Amelia Rubin introduced 
Morris Caplan, a medium-sized man of about thirty-six, 
who rose clumsily and acknowledged the introduction 
with “Pleezed te mee' che!” A heavy gold watch chain 
threaded through a lower buttonhole of his waistcoat and 
draped over to a pocket, called attention to his slight 
tendency to a paunch. Upon his large, healthily colored 
face set with a broad nose, generous mouth and kind 
blue eyes, there played a smile of good nature. 

Amelia Rubin, a thin, weazened little creature, wearing 
an unpretty, stiffly-starched shirtwaist, which brought out 
the lines of bitterness on her small, sallow face and, by 
creasing in the back, exaggerated the roundness of her 
shoulders, brushed loose strands of her straight black 


334 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

hair away from her ears and screwed up her small brown 
eyes. 

“Mr. Caplan,” she said, addressing Minnie in an 
aggrieved tone, “don’t believe it that it’s worser half 
slavery like whole.” 

Mr. Caplan looked uncomfortable and was about to 
say that Miss Rubin was misquoting him when Minnie 
asked : 

“What does that mean ?” 

“Like to work wit’ small wages, not to eat, not to 
starve.” 

Mr. Caplan looked round the room as in search of a 
way of escape. It is characteristic of the Russian Jew 
dubbed “kike” to be bored by the precocious wisdom of 
the women of his own class. 

Morris Caplan was a radical ; he believed in the equal- 
ity of all mankind, in the abolition of wage slavery, but 
he was Amelia Rubin’s senior by ten years, a successful 
real-estate dealer with a substantial bank account upon 
which his head rested comfortably, and so past the age 
and stage of extravagant protest. Amelia Rubin bored 
him, but she was a compatriot of his ; their families on 
the other side were allied in the friendship that shares 
pots and pans and funeral expenses, so he had to see her 
occasionally to be able to send news of her to the other 
side. 

Amelia, for her part, was in love with Morris Caplan 
and talked sagely in the hope of interesting him, while he, 
out of politeness, would grudgingly take up the discus- 
sions she initiated. But this evening he made it obvious 
that he was bored. She had been trying to convince him, 
regardless of whether he was already convinced or not, 
that the wage slave is as much of a slave as the chattel 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


335 


slave. To her clumsy presentation he had, out of sheer 
capriciousness, answered that “Half is half and whole is 
whole — twice as much,” his tone so frankly implying that 
he was not interested that Amelia had taken refuge in 
calling in Minnie. 

Amelia’s explanation made her statement no clearer to 
Minnie. 

“I still don’t know what you mean.” 

She spoke without an accent. Morris Caplan was in- 
terested. Though he had been ready to go a moment be- 
fore, he straightened up and rested his eyes on the new- 
comer. She looked American-born, and her dark blue 
serge dress trimmed with a white collar brought out the 
gray of her eyes. 

Morris Caplan smiled indulgently, feeling infinitely 
older than either of the girls. 

“Amelia wants to inform me like a big piece of news 
that small wages makes big troubles.” 

Minnie burst into a merry, but not boisterous giggle. 
The quality of restraint in her laugh affected Morris Cap- 
lan, as it had others, with a sense of modesty in her and 
reserve. Sitting there blushing, she made a feminine con- 
trast to Amelia, who had responded by a smile and a 
wise nod of her head, as if to say: “Indeed, this time 
Morris Caplan had been the sage.” 

“I work in the Peoples Charities, and my goodness! 
there you see the horrors of small wages and the greater 
horrors of no wages at all.” 

Minnie’s listeners were inspired with deference. One 
so seldom heard words of good sense from the average 
American girl. 

“What you workin’ there by ?” asked Amelia. 

“I’m a stenographer,” Minnie replied self-consciously, 


336 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


proud to be able to say so, though after she had spoken, 
her words sounded in her own soul like bragging. For a 
moment the past of shop and store hovered close. 

Morris Caplafi gave her a look of generous approval 
and was glad of her presence. Life for him was dull. 
Having been all-engrossed in his business for a number 
of years, he had had no time for making friends, and 
now that he was ready for them, he found that those of 
his own educational and intellectual standing did not sat- 
isfy him and those of greater attainments, especially girls, 
made no response to his advances, while the American 
girls that tolerated him did so only for the “good time” 
his money bought. Here was a girl living in a home for 
poor girls who probably had as yet no assessed valuation 
upon herself. In his longing for comrades of superior 
mentality and culture, his heart leapt to the possibilities 
of Minnie as a friend. 

The gong for the dismissal of visitors sounded. Mor- 
ris Caplan rose to go. 

“ ’Ope to mee’ che again, Mees Mendel.” 

Minnie shook hands with him. As he walked to the 
door escorted by Amelia, she was not sure, looking at his 
stocky figure and clumsy walk and with his offensive ac- 
cent sounding in her ears, whether she hoped to meet 
him again. While she undressed for bed, he still occu- 
pied her thoughts. Who was he? What was he? In 
her need for companionship she rather hoped she would 
meet him again. 


XXVI 

A long line of needy ones waited to be heard in the 
Charities employment bureau. The windows were closed 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


337 


against the rain, and the thick atmosphere reeked with 
the sour stench of poor people. Under a siege of light- 
saving the room was gloomily dim. 

Minnie had put the same questions about a dozen 
times: with thumb pointing upward, “How many chil- 
dren have you over fourteen years ?” with thumb pointing 
downward, “How many children have you under four- 
teen years ?” 

The man confronting her looked like an animated 
skeleton to which a stubby beard only added the more 
gruesomeness. He dropped his eyes, in which tears had 
gathered, then, as if bracing himself for a high jump, 
said with dignity and in a low voice: 

“I had six children. The four older ones died. The 
two left are under fourteen.” 

Far from becoming inured to the misery that surged 
through the doors of the Peoples Charities, Minnie felt 
the applicants’ misfortunes with greater and greater keen- 
ness. A dull heartache, now constantly with her, was 
accentuated to a painful smart by each new account of 
suffering. She sat silent a while, finding it difficult, as 
she often had of late, to fix her mind on her work. 
But the record card, on which her eyes were lowered, 
stared a reminder. She had not yet extracted all the 
required information. 

“What is your name, please?” 

“Chayim Schlopoborsky.” 

She raised her eyes, her lower jaw dropped slightly, 
her hand remained poised in the air. 

Chayim Schlopoborsky shuffled uneasily under her 
stare. 

Minnie looked round the room, called to another girl 


338 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


to take her place, and fled to an ante-room where the 
tears came in a rush. 

“He perjured his soul by throwing us out of the cellar 
so that he could bring his children away from pogroms, 
and now they are dead !” Minnie sobbed to herself. “I 
suppose they went from cellar to cellar until they reached 
the lowest one! What an awful life!” 

But she mustn’t stay away too long. Drying her eyes, 
she returned to work. Approaching her desk, she heard 
her substitute’s voice raised in admonition. 

“Why don’t you show a little more enthusiasm ? One 
would think you were doing us a favor!” 

The substitute had proposed a position at which the 
work was soling shoes by machine. Chayim Schlopo- 
borsky had hesitated diffidently, wishing to say he could 
do better by hand, as he had never worked a machine. 

“Don’t you dare !” Minnie, quickly stepping forward, 
cried in an unnaturally suppressed voice. “He is a human 
being just like you. You don’t know when your turn to 
stand behind this counter will come.” 

The substitute was too surprised to retort, but the ex- 
pression of her eyes gave promise of a sequel. 

It was difficult the rest of the day for Minnie to put 
her mind on her work. The scene left her overwrought, 
with flushes of lingering indignation, followed by chills 
of waxing nervousness as to a possibly disastrous issue 
to herself. It was an audacious act. Would the girl 
complain about her, and would she be scolded or would 
they do worse and discharge her? In optimistic mo- 
ments she welcomed complaint as giving her the oppor- 
tunity she had sometimes desired to tell the superintend- 
ent that the applicants were often abused and to suggest 
that unsympathetic people ought not to be employed in 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


339 


the Charities. But optimistic moments were rare. She 
knew herself ; in front of the chief she would be tongue- 
tied, the beating of her heart would stiffle her thoughts. 
She hated herself for her nervousness. . . . Reverting 
to Chayim Schlopoborsky, she wondered whether the 
service she had rendered him outweighed the injury she 
had done herself. She had acted right, she assured her- 
self, and was glad she had spoken out. On her way home 
she breathed in the fresh air gratefully, as if it were a 
gift. 

Minnie had had a few talks with Amelia Rubin. 
Though her philosophy was trite enough to Morris Cap- 
lan, it was not so to Minnie, who found it echoed un- 
formulated thoughts of her own; and but for Amelia’s 
uncouthness and almost unintelligible language, she would 
have given herself up freely to friendship with her. 
Minnie was at the flapper stage of extreme stress of the 
aesthetic. 

This evening, however, she forgot her distaste in her 
eagerness to pour out her heart to someone; she ap- 
proached Amelia with the easy familiarity of much more 
than a week’s acquaintance and asked her to go out for a 
walk. But Amelia — she was very sorry — had arranged 
with another girl to attend a Peoples’ Symphony Concert. 
Minnie was desolate. With a slight tremor, but with an 
attempt at a smile, she assured Amelia it was “all right,” 
they could take a walk together some other time, and 
hurried back to her room. 

Here she tried to read Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, 
but was too restless to get interested, and soon threw 
the book down to comb her hair. Then she went to the 
wash-room to remove ink stains from her fingers, came 
back and stood before the looking-glass trying on collars 


340 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


and ribbons at the neck of her dress. Nothing gave her 
satisfaction. In a resolute attempt to keep the wheels of 
thought about her outburst and her position from revolv- 
ing in her mind, she decided, as a last resort, to take a 
walk by herself. 

On the street outside the entrance of the Home she 
came upon Morris Caplan. 

“ ’Alio, Mees Mendel !” He held out his hand to 
Minnie. 

“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Caplan?” she greeted him, 
and, assuming he had come to visit Amelia, promptly in- 
formed him where his friend had gone. She did not 
observe his excited manner and that his red face had 
taken on a few more shades of red. In her unsuspicious- 
ness that he had walked to the street of the Alpha Home 
in the hope of a chance meeting with her, she moved off. 
“Good night!” 

He detained her. Where was she off to? Nowhere? 
Then, as it was drizzling, why not both of them return to 
the Alpha Home? 

When they sat facing each other in the sitting-room, 
Minnie felt as though the heavens had opened and 
dropped down a gift. She had been so lonely and so in 
need of someone to whom to pour out her surcharged 
heart. 

His first utterance, however, dispelled the charm. He 
seemed to chew his words and spit them out. How had 
he learned so well to pronounce just exactly wrong? 
Not even Minnie’s Rivington Street “scholners” had 
spoken so badly. Or was it because her ears had then 
been less attuned to proper sounds, she wondered. She 
must have grown terribly “particular” in a short time, 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 341 

and she warned herself against acquiring extravagant 
tastes. 

What had “see” done during the week? Had “see” 
been happy? Every day but to-day? What then had 
happened to-day? Morris Caplan’s eyes rested upon 
Minnie with a sort of elderly-paternal kindness, which 
went to her heart and made her feel like a little child. 

She had had trouble that day at the Charities, she told* 
him. He asked for details, and she, less anxious to re- 
sist than to confide, gave him an account of her cham- 
pionship of Chayim Schlopoborsky, without, however, 
mentioning her prior acquaintance with the cobbler. 

As Morris Caplan listened, while leisurely surveying 
her well-fitting, becoming black skirt and dainty blouse 
and taking in the charm of her eyes, which suggested a 
gray sky, and the refinement of her enunciation, he felt 
his heart warm toward her. It brought back his own 
enthusiastic youth when, precisely as she, he had grown 
heated over the right and the wrong of things. Now he 
was more mature, more sedate, more settled down, so to 
speak, into the world’s ways, but his spirit responded 
with sad envy and appreciation. Her young mind seemed 
to spread its wings and be soaring. This girl, he felt, 
had the attractiveness of simplicity and innocence of her 
own attractiveness. His demeanor changed from the 
condescending paternal to that of the friendly listener 
and adviser. 

He was sure she would not lose her position, but if she 
were to, he could use a smart girl like her in his own office. 
She had been quite right to take issue with the substitute ; 
no human being had the right to abuse another. Indeed, 
he was glad to have learned of the injustice ; he would 


342 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

withdraw his own annual contribution to the Peoples 
Charities. 

The last was said with the distinct object of making 
an impression upon Minnie, who, however, did not re- 
spond by so much as the quiver of an eyelash ; which only 
increased Morris Caplan’s respect for Minnie Mendel. 
Here was a twentieth-century American girl who had no 
scent for money. In his experience American girls con- 
descended to be in his company in the expectation of 
theater treats, taxi rides, and boxes of candy, looking 
upon him, to his keen consciousness and hurt, as a “kike,” 
because of his accent, disregardful of his real quali- 
ties of heart and soul. This little American girl was the 
first one with whom, in the longest while, he had had a 
sensible talk. 

The dismissal gong rang far too soon for Morris Cap- 
lan. On rising he ventured the hope that she would let 
him visit her again. Minnie also was sorry the evening 
had come to an end. It was flattering that a man so much 
older than she listened to her so interestedly. On the 
way to her room she quivered with a feeling akin to a 
child's excitement in a new toy. 

XXVII 

The tale of Minnie's “jumping on” the substitute was 
spread by that young person in various forms of exag- 
geration among the others of her clan, whose dander 
went up sympathetically at “the audacity of her,” “the 
cheek of her,” “the nerve of her.” She had better look 
out and not try any such tricks on them. However, no 
charges were brought, and for many weeks things went 
along in their uninterrupted drab way. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


343 


The perplexing problem of poverty never left Minnie’s 
mind. How could a world of presumably good people 
tolerate such wretchedness in their midst? Why did not 
those with a surplus hand it over promiscuously to those 
with nothing? And if the surplus was not handed over, 
then why did not those deprived of the means of living 
rebel? Why, instead of rebelling, did they come daily 
and beg for alms? It seemed so perfectly simple and 
easy to Minnie for the poor to get together and resolve 
to abolish their poverty. 

Amelia Rubin, with whom she discussed these things, 
agreed with her, but her agreement was tainted by a bit- 
ter cynicism with which Minnie was not yet ripe enough 
to cope. For refuge she fled to fun-making. 

When Amelia was sure that God was “invented” to 
keep folks in the dark so that all sorts of vile “tricks” 
could be perpetrated upon them while kept by their be- 
lief in jelly-fish submission and subordination, Minnie 
was sure that there was a God, but since there was man- 
kind, too, and in the majority at that, men ruled things 
in their own way and had made such a mess of it that He 
had retired in confusion, so that while some simple peo- 
ple still continued to pray to Him and to worship Him, 
He was really every moment eloquently proclaiming 
through our very human miseries that His power had 
been deposed. But if Amelia, in the way of young cynics, 
was so touched by a lovely sky, by a sunset, by the chirp- 
ing of a sparrow that she sighed and soliloquized that 
maybe, after all, there was a God, Minnie would look up 
to heaven and exclaim: “God in heaven, save this girl 
from such foolishness!” or “You are as fickle as God’s 
image has a right to be, so I’m not blaming you.” 

Minnie took the same refuge from Morris Caplan’s 


344 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


atrocious language. After he had called four or five 
times again and she had, upon Amelia’s urgent invitation, 
always joined them, she refused the next time. Though 
his one visit alone with her, in the particularly dependent 
mood in which she had been that evening, had given her 
pleasure, his subsequent visits had been boresome. The 
conversations, with Amelia at the helm, had seemed al- 
ways to pull the wrong way. 

One evening he called when Amelia was out. Minnie 
went down wondering who could possibly have asked to 
see Miss Mendel. At sight of Morris Caplan she was 
appalled. But he came forward smiling so broadly and 
radiating so much cordiality as he said, “ ’Alio, Mees 
Mendel,” that she felt her heart warm to him with af- 
fection. Pretty soon she was saying with a twinkle : 

“Why do you spoil perfectly good silence? Silence 
grates much less on the ear than ‘dets is/ ‘enyhull,’ *yeh, 
‘partickala.’ If you want to speak, why don’t you learn 
how? And why do you call me ‘mees’ ?* What did I 
ever do to you to be called ‘mees?’ 

“Go on,” said Morris Caplan, “laugh yourself fat!” 
As if to assure himself that she needed the additional 
flesh, he took hold of her arm, laughing with her as she 
wriggled out of his grasp. 

In two weeks’ time Morris Caplan, real estate dealer, 
whose business policy it was never to take “no” for an 
answer, had wheedled Miss Mendel into giving him les- 
sons in English. 

XXVIII 

Life for over a year proceeded in the same tenor — 
work, eat, sleep, giving Morris Caplan lessons, walks 

* Mees is the Yiddish for “ugly.” 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


345 


with him, walks with Amelia — until one day Ida, acting 
as Sarah’s emissary, came with Beckie to bring Minnie 
the news that Jacob was going to graduate from college 
and wanted her to attend the exercises. 

Minnie was touched. After all, they did not look on 
her as an outsider ; she was welcome to the family circle. 
To keep back the tears that would come if she answered 
directly, she cast about for something else to say. 

“Is Abie Ratkin going to graduate, too?” 

Ida, though she resentfully attributed to Minnie’s indif- 
ference this switching off from the matter of family 
interest, answered politely enough: 

“He graduated last year. He skipped a term. He’s 
teaching already. Jacob got extra tickets and invited 
Abie, and you can sit with him. We all thought” — here 
she got in her sting — “you’d feel contaminated if you 
sat with us.” 

Minnie grew hot. 

“Tell Jacob,” she said, lowering her head to hide the 
twitching of her face, “I congratulate him.” 

“Thank God!” cried Ida in exaggerated relief, as 
though Minnie had accepted the invitation in so many 
words. “Mama lived in mortal terror of your turning 
up your nose.” She laughed disagreeably. 

A week later, Minnie, dressed in clothes all new ex- 
cept for her shoes and gloves (no working-girl is ever 
clad in absolute harmonious newness) with a two-dollar- 
and-sixty-five-cent volume of Shakespeare’s complete 
works under her arm, started off for Carnegie Hall. 

“My goodness,” she kept saying to herself, “I’ve got a 
brother a college graduate !” She hugged “college grad- 
uate” proudly. 


346 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


On an empty cross street, which she chose in order 
to make better speed, she was roused out of herself by 
a caterwauling, which proceeded from a ragged little 
urchin down whose muddy countenance the tears were 
making pathways. Minnie investigated. The little one 
was lost and had no idea of his parentage or place of 
habitation. There was nothing to do but to take him by 
the hand and lead him, no, drag him — oh, how the child 
crept! — to the nearest station-house. 

****** 

At half-past seven there were already gathered in Car- 
negie Hall the zealous relatives of graduates, who pre- 
ferred to wait an hour to being one moment late. There 
was subdued whispering, handshaking and smiles of 
heaven itself on the wrinkled faces of old-fashioned 
mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles; and the eyes of 
the younger generation shone with peace on earth, good 
will to men. Flitting figures of young men garbed in the 
graduation black were followed with loving exclamations, 
“That’s my son !” “That’s my brother !” and were scruti- 
nized with wonderment and reverence. 

Presently there came toiling up the stairs a silent group, 
Sarah, Leopold, Ida, Beckie. Sarah’s heart was heavy. 
Jacob, in his relentless unforgivingness, had not extended 
a personal invitation to Leopold, who had been offended 
and at the last moment had refused to attend the exer- 
cises. 

Sarah’s heart writhed. She had felt intuitively it 
would be so. By this time in her life she had reached the 
conclusion that she was destined never to experience un- 
adulterated happiness. Her boy was to be graduated 
from college! An achievement for poor people. An 
honor, a glory, to witness a son proclaimed a gentleman 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


34 7 


learned in the ways of great things. The occasion, which 
ought to be one of pure joy, must be marred for her; 
she had felt it ; she had known that Jacob’s failure to in- 
vite his stepfather personally would mean Leopold’s re- 
fusal to attend. That he had refrained from protesting 
until the last moment had only meant a period of miser- 
able anticipation. Sarah was hurt, angered. Neverthe- 
less, subduing her voice, she reasoned pleasantly with her 
husband that Jacob was self-conscious about things like 
reconciliations, and it was a little omission which Leo- 
pold ought not to mind. “Jacob,” she concluded, “did not 
even send an invitation to Minnie. I myself sent the in- 
vitation by Ida and Beckie.” 

But Leopold was not to be argued out of his grievance ; 
Jacob could graduate without his presence just as well, 
he said. Further persuasion only increased the tension. 
Sarah’s heightened color, the stubborn quiet of the two 
girls, Leopold’s subdued but impassioned voice, charged 
the atmosphere as with an explosive. 

When it was high time to leave, Sarah began to cry 
and to lament her never-ending hard lot. Bad enough 
that her children were parted and scattered and her heart 
was always torn in a thousand pieces — Leopold had not 
the right on this special occasion of a lifetime to make her 
miserable and let her feel how divided her life was; 
for without Leopold she was not willing to go to the exer- 
cises, and to absent herself from her boy’s graduation 
would break her heart. 

Leopold gave evidence of relenting by taking off his 
everyday necktie and rummaging in his bureau drawer 
for a Sunday one. In silence, then, Sarah and the girls 
made ready ; in silence all four traveled to the graduation 
hall, and in silence climbed the stairs to the gallery, each 


348 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


with mingled emotions of the gladness of the occasion 
and the sadness of their unnatural family life. 

As soon as they were seated, Sarah asked Ida to point 
out Minnie’s seat. The eyes of the other three followed 
Ida’s index finger. The seat was empty. When the hall 
began to fill up and from the stirring on the platform it 
seemed that the exercises would soon begin, Sarah 
glanced anxiously toward Minnie’s seat and then toward 
the entrance. Would it be Minnie that was going to 
absent herself? How heartaches never ended for her! 
Leopold discerned Sarah’s misery and genuinely re- 
gretted the distress he himself had caused her. 

A young man was about to enter the row of Minnie’s 
seat. Abie Ratkin? They all peered. Yes, it was Abie 
Ratkin. Ida, catching his eye, beckoned to him. At the 
same moment Jacob appeared, hot, hurried, excited. 

“God mine !” Sarah exclaimed inwardly, “will he greet 
his uncle?” 

Jacob, whose heart must have been reached by his 
mother’s unspoken cry, turned to Leopold and clumsily 
shook hands with him. Leopold, touched, congratulated 
him. Sarah, out of gratitude, rose slightly from her seat, 
Jacob bent down, and they kissed. Then the girl also 
kissed their brother, and Abraham Ratkin congratulated 
him. 

Jacob, embarrassed and eager to hide his embarrass- 
ment, said he had stolen away to see them only for a 
minute, and left. Ida called after him that they would 
all meet on the street after the exercises. 

Abraham lingered to ask for Minnie. Beckie, with a 
knowing, teasing twinkle, told him Minnie was coming 
and was even going to sit beside him; embarrassed, he 
made a mocking bow in appreciation of the courtesy. 
Sarah, whose eyes were misted over with anxiety about 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


349 


Minnie, acknowledged the fun with a melancholy smile, 
and as soon as Abraham left for his seat, sent another 
furtive glance toward the entrance. Would Minnie 
come? 

“Makes me sick,” Ida muttered, “always spoils every- 
thing.” 

A voice called for order, everybody was seated, and a 
solemn hush fell upon the place. The graduates began 
to assemble on the platform ; there was music, coughing, 
scattering sneezes and general adjustment. Then one 
could have heard a pin drop. 

Sarah looked anxiously at Minnie’s still vacant seat. 

A gray-haired gentleman in a brief preliminary speech 
introduced another elderly gentleman, who rose lum- 
beringly and crossed to the front of the platform with 
dignified professorial mien. In a deep, solemn voice he 
laid before the audience the history of the nation’s policy 
of wonderful democracy, which gave to one and all equal 
opportunity to reach the heights of education, the heights 
of attainment in every field, the heights of glory. He 
repeated points he wished especially to impress, and sol- 
emnly, adjuringly, pleaded for due appreciation of the 
benefits conferred by the College of the City of New 
York. 

The speech brought tears to the eyes of parents who, 
listening, understood not a word, since the language was 
not their language. But what else could the man be say- 
ing than that the particular boy of the particular parent 
be ever grateful, ever appreciative of the sacrifices en- 
tailed in sending him through college? Who but a par- 
ent would have made such sacrifices ? Who but a parent 
would have slaved and stinted himself so all the years? 
A parent’s love was holy ; a parent’s life hard. 


350 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


A pause and a storm of applause. 

Sarah’s misted eyes again traveled to the door. At 
that moment Minnie, hot and flurried, entered. As by 
Fate decreed, she met her mother’s gaze in all that throng 
of people. 

Sarah’s heart gave a great leap, and the color left her 
face and lips, while Minnie grew dizzy and felt herself 
turn pale. 

Ida, who succeeded in drawing Minnie’s eyes to her, 
shrugged her shoulders and pursed her lips as if to ask 
what good excuse Minnie could give for being late on 
such an occasion. Minnie understood and hurriedly 
sought her seat. The momentary unhappiness tugging 
at her heart gave way to pleasure at meeting Abie, who 
smiled self-consciously, quite overcome by the great 
change in her. “A regular lady” was his summing up. 

The stage proceedings had no meaning to Sarah now. 
Her eyes devoured her prodigal daughter, and her ears 
could listen only to the words of her own soul, “How 
she has grown ! Only yesterday she was a teething baby. 
She looks just as I used to look when I was a young girl 
— the same gray eyes — the same features. If only she 
will not have my black luck !” 

Hand-clapping woke her as from out of a dream. 

During a short intermission, occasioned by some hitch 
in the proceedings, Beckie left her seat to ask Minnie 
what had made her late. Minnie explained. Well, at 
such a time to bother to take a strange child to a station- 
house! Even Beckie could not condone Minnie’s be- 
havior. Did Abraham think Minnie had done right? 
Abraham evaded Beckie’s pretty eyes. This display in 
Minnie of altruism rather appealed to him, though under 
the circumstances he could not quite approve of it, and 
it occurred to him that the Mendels had forever a bone 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


35i 

of contention, if not over a big thing then over a trifle* 
He said nothing. Minnie felt guilty. 

The next number began. 

Minnie’s eyes followed Beckie’s departing figure and, 
traveling a bit too far, again encountered her mother’s. 
Sarah was gray at the temples, her lips were parched, she 
looked tired, haggard, harassed. A pang of regret from 
a feeling that she was partly to blame smote Minnie’s 
heart. She moved in her seat to dispel the feeling and 
urged upon herself that this was a happy occasion when 
she ought not to let anything disturb her. 

A small, narrow-shouldered young man, his face flush- 
ing painfully, his whole manner showing he was horribly 
nervous, stepped forward on the stage, cleared his throat 
in an effort to bring notes of manliness into a naturally 
piping voice, and proclaimed to the accompaniment of see- 
saw gestures that : 

“Our duty to the city and the college is clear. For 
years my fellow-classmates and I have received the con- 
tinuous care of our alma mater. And now we are 
alumni. All that these halls of learning can give us we 
have received. All the attention of our patient instruc- 
tors has been lavished upon us. The wisdom of the past 
and present has been absorbed by us. As loyal grad- 
uates of the college we will always think with pride and 
tenderness of our years spent at the college and our ob- 
ligation to our friends at the college.” 

Minnie’s mind wandered. The whole of the past had 
so long been sunk below her horizon that she had almost 
outlived it and hardly ever recalled that she had a mother, 
and a home if she chose to go to it. Nor did Abie Rat- 
kin enter her thoughts often enough for her to feel he 
was a part of her past. And here he was — here was her 
mother ! The past was a part of one. It was like turning 


352 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


round and suddenly confronting your own shadow. 
Even the Helina Heimath was out of her mind already. 
For all the plans she had made, when she was an inmate, 
to visit the place after she had left, she had never gone 
there again. She seemed to have stepped into another 
world. Would something come up to remind her that 
that charity, that pauperism, was part of her, too? A 
shudder went through her. . . . She glanced sidewise at 
Abraham. He was still short, shorter than she — his head 
was a triflle lower than hers. His nose was still curved, 
his hair scanty, his eyes small, like the eyes of a Japanese, 
and he still wore glasses and still looked intellectual, as 
if he spent long hours over books ; and his face still wore 
a benevolent expression — the ideal schoolmaster’s face. 
Though Minnie was quite sure that he was very learned, 
she wondered for some reason whether life itself reached 
him as poignantly as it did her and whether he under- 
stood it. Could he, for instance, understand what was 
making her heart ache now, when she saw her mother 
grayed and felt she herself had deliberately contributed to 
the grayness and would continue to do so? Could he 
understand her unhappiness because there was poverty 
in the world, her resentment because nothing but the mere 
physical opportunity differentiated the “ladies” who vis- 
ited the Helina Heimath from the patients they patron- 
ized? No, she did not think he could understand all that. 
He seemed to have a heart of peace and an understand- 
ing to match. 

Applause again. Minnie was roused. She sighed. 

“Why that sigh ?” 

“Oh, I’m just thinking.” 

Abraham smiled an embarrassed smile and moved self- 
consciously in his seat. He cleared his throat. 

“Thinking? Do you do that?” 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


353 


She slewed her eyes round at him, and his breath was 
cut short. If her eyes had been beautiful the last time 
he had seen her the Saturday afternoon when she was 
alone and had plied him with ten thousand questions they 
were more than beautiful now. They were like two gray 
clouds of endless depth, with tales and tales to tell. He 
looked away. 

“Yes, I do think. Why, does it surprise you?” 

She seemed displeased. With a fluttering droop of eye- 
lids and a paternal kindliness in voice and manner, he 
said he was only joking; of course she thought; anyone 
could see she did ; in fact, she seemed to be quite a 
thinker ; some day soon she would have to tell him every- 
thing she thought about. 

She felt reduced to a mite of a girl and was silenced, 
hesitating between even greater displeasure and the satis- 
faction that seems to be woman’s more normal reaction 
to such treatment at the hands and tongue of man. 

There were a few other numbers, then came Jacob, 
valedictorian. The hearts of all his family pounded with 
pride and excitement as he moved to the front of the plat- 
form. Minnie threw a cutting glance at a man behind 
her who coughed irritatingly. Jacob cleared his throat. 
The family leaned forward in their seats and strained 
every nerve to listen. In a deep voice, with attendant 
dignity, he began : 

“We have traced the course of history and evolution 
through the long rolling centuries, which have each made 
their special contribution toward carrying the world from 
primeval barbarism to the present era of culture and civi- 
lization. We have examined the attitude of rich and 
poor alike, of the plutocrat, who regards the whole world 
as an attractive prey, and of the humble laborer, who 
adds to the world's assets. 


354 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


‘‘And can we hesitate as to what cause to champion, 
whose battle to fight? Never. We should be craven in 
our highest duties to mankind if we did not stand for the 
future against the past, for the toiler against the para- 
site.” 

That was all Minnie heard. Her heart pounded and 
deafened her. He had said something about siding with 
the poor as against the rich, something about a past of 
the one and a future of the other. It was not clear to 
her, but she felt a kinship with him. “Jacob, too ! Jacob, 
too !” she kept saying to herself happily, the blood run- 
ning warm through her veins. Oh, if only she could 
speak to him ! 

Another outburst of applause. 

Sarah wept. 

Leopold was pale. His skin seemed suddenly to have 
shrivelled; a subtle sense of guilt had stolen upon his 
heart. Had he actually stood between this mother and 
that son — blood of each’ other’s blood, flesh of each oth- 
er’s flesh? He was in superstitious fear of judgment 
even though something deep in his being cried that he had 
not meant to usurp the place of this mother’s children. 
He gave Sarah a sad look. She met it and placed her 
hand in his ; together they sighed. 

The exercises closed. Some of the audience loitered 
for one more look upon a holy graduate. Most of them 
made for the exits. 

XXIX 

Ida and Beckie, who had got separated in the crowd 
from Sarah and Leopold, reached the street ahead of 
them and joined Minnie and Abraham. The four waited 
together. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


355 


Sarah, slowly following the crowd, wondered with a 
heavy heart whether Minnie would seek a reconciliation. 
Leopold, conscious of the mother’s misery, breathed a 
silent prayer that Minnie would for once forget to be 
stubborn. 

Minnie cast nervous glances at the crowd emerging 
from the doorway. She hoped fervently that Jacob 
would arrive before Sarah and Leopold, so that she could 
give him the volume of Shakespeare, congratulate him, 
ask him to come to see her, and get away. Though she 
did not feel unforgiving, she shrank from meeting her 
mother and stepfather. The separation had seemed so 
definitely established in her mind as a lasting one that 
the thought of a reconciliation filled her with shame, as 
if it would be maudlin and unwholesome. 

Leopold and Sarah appeared in the doorway. 

Minnie quickly handed the volume of Shakespeare to 
Beckie, asked her to give it to Jacob with her congratu- 
lations, and saying good-by hurriedly left. 

Abraham, looking from her to Ida and Beckie, quickly 
took in the situation and dashed after her. 

Sarah and Leopold saw what had taken place. With 
bowed heads they crossed over to Ida and Beckie, and 
the four stood a silent group until Jacob appeared, then 
they walked away, dully, heavily. 

When they reached the corner at which Jacob turned 
his independent way, Sarah kissed him, and until they 
reached home she held her handkerchief steadily to her 
eyes. 


XXX 

Abraham had learned from Jacob, with whom he as- 
sociated at college, that Sarah had married again and that 


356 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

he had left home, but not that Minnie had left home, 
too. 

He and Minnie walked side by side for some time 
without talking. Minnie was under too great stress to 
speak, and Abraham sensed it. Finally he ventured to 
ask where she lived. She told him. Silence fell between 
them again. Then Abraham, deciding he ought to divert 
her mind from her unhappiness, said: 

“Well, now, tell me everything you think about. You 
promised.” 

“Do you think I think so little that I can tell you all 
I think at once?” 

He saw she was annoyed, and he was sorry. 

“No,” he said jokingly, adopting a light tone as the 
best remedial measure, “I suppose your wisdom is not so 
easily conveyed. Is that a subtle invitation to me to come 
to see you?” 

She smiled, and it crossed her mind that it would be 
nice to have him visit her. She was grateful he had 
suggested it. She softened, and in her changed mood 
repented her brutal avoidance of her mother, and was 
caught by an impulse to hurry back. But the months 
when she lay ill and neglected at the Helina Heimath 
rose to her mind. Raising her head with a little jerk as 
if to shut out of sight the bitter picture and with a stif- 
fening of her whole frame, she started conversation. 

“Did you understand what Jacob said?” 

The question touched the schoolmaster’s pride. Abra- 
ham cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. 

Why, yes. Jacob, like himself, was a Socialist. 

“What is a Socialist?” She had never got a clear 
idea of Socialism from Amelia, and thought here was her 
chance. 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


357 


Abraham cleared his throat again. 

“A Socialist is one Who believes in the social owner- 
ship of all the means of production; in other words, the 
ownership by the government of all public utilities; the 
mines, for example, the mills, the factories, the railroads, 
the telegraphs, and so on.” 

As Minnie did not understand the significance or any 
of the implications of such ownership, she ventured no 
comment or further questions. She felt disappointed. 
Abraham, however, eager to instruct, most in his element 
when doing so, continued: 

“Of course, from social ownership of social utilities, 
would result the elimination of rent, interest, and profit, 
which would do away with the exploitation of one human 
being by another.” 

Minnie was awed into respect. Abraham’s learning re- 
duced her to humility. A wave of bitterness rose within 
her against her mother, Leopold Pollack and the whole 
world that she had not had the opportunity of going 
through high school and college. She walked beside 
Abraham in unhappy silence. Then she recollected Mor- 
ris Caplan’s and Amelia Rubin’s idealization of her as 
a paragon of knowledge, and the weight on her heart 
lightened somewhat. Yet throughout the rest of the 
evening, she was depressed by a sense of inferiority. 

At the door of the Alpha Home, Abraham asked 
whether he might come again. In her surprise she hesi- 
tated in saying yes. 

“Won’t you be glad to see me ?” he questioned, holding 
her hand in a goodnight shake. 

“Yes.” She lowered her eyes. 

He would come the following Sunday then. 

Minnie ran into the house and up to her room aquiver 


358 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


with the excitement of the evening's experiences. As 
she stood in front of the looking glass combing her hair, 
her mind was a medley. Her mother was gray already ! 
She had looked unhappy and as if she were begging for 
some sign of recognition from Minnie. How had she 
had the heart to run away? She had not seen Jacob at 
all ! What an odd evening to come in upon all the recent 
serene ones. Life never went smoothly two minutes at 
a time. How she would love to talk to Jacob ! Oh, but 
if his ideas of rich and poor had no more meaning for 
her than what Abie had said, what good were they? 
She did not understand it all anyway — never would. . . . 
Abie would come again. That meant another friend 
maybe. She wouldn’t be so lonely. Morris Caplan and 
Amelia Rubin, after all, weren’t altogether her sort. 
From them she never learned anything. But then Abie 
knew too much for her. If he spoke above her head, 
what good was it? Oh, nothing ever was just right. . . . 
Leopold looked older, troubled. Did they really care a 
rap about her ? Then why hadn’t they run after her, fol- 
lowed her anyway? Why had mama never come to see 
her at the Helina Heimath? She had been sick — so sick. 
No real mother would have done such a thing. But 
maybe — mama was getting older — maybe she would die! 
Minnie shuddered and hastily tumbled into bed to drown 
all in sleep. 


XXXI 

On Sunday afternoon Minnie, her hair arranged as 
becomingly as she could get it, the collar of her blue 
serge dress spotless, was sitting in her small, neat room 
waiting for the hall telephone of her floor to ring to an- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


359 


nounce her visitor. Her mind would wander from The 
Doll’s House , and though she told herself over and over 
that it was foolish to be nervous, it was only Abie Rat- 
kin who was coming, yet her heart pounded and her 
cheeks burned, and every little while, though quite con- 
vinced that she looked well and even pretty, she rose and 
examined herself in the looking-glass, putting almost sin- 
gle hairs in place. Would Abraham guess she was so 
nervous, she wondered. She rubbed her dank hands so 
that they should not betray her when she shook hands 
with him. 

But Abraham’s own hands were moist, from the very 
same cause, and he noticed nothing. He, too, had told 
himself it was only Minnie Mendel he was going to visit 
while his heart pounded disproportionately with the im- 
portance of the occasion. When she moved toward him 
gracefully in the waiting-room, smiling and pretty, he 
found himself at a loss what to say. To gain time he 
glanced over his shoulder, pretending he had heard the 
sound of something drop. 

Did she wish to stay in or take a walk? She thought 
they might stay in a while and then take a walk. They 
seated themselves. Each seemed to go through a mo- 
ment of adjustment, as if their souls were smoothing out 
wrinkles. Minnie, to whom his embarrassment was ob- 
vious, wondered, provoked with herself, whether she, too, 
was revealing her nervousness. She simply must not. 
So she took herself in hand and coolly began to talk. 

How was his mother? His sisters? Had they grad- 
uated? Yes? A pang of jealousy smote her, and she 
looked away not to betray herself, suppressed a little 
sigh, and went on. Had he got home all right the night 
of Jacob’s graduation? 


360 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

Abraham several times changed his position on his 
chair and cleared his throat, bringing his hand up awk- 
wardly to his mouth. He wished they were out walk- 
ing. The night of the graduation exercises, when they 
had come home together, he had not been so deucedly 
self-conscious. He felt it was absurd to allow merely 
Minnie Mendel to unbalance him so ; even the professors 
at college had never had the power to unnerve him. Fi- 
nally he brought out the suggestion that they go out 
walking. Minnie acquiesced readily, jumped up to go 
and get her hat, and turned toward the door. 

There stood Morris Caplan, ruddy-cheeked, smiling 
broadly, his heavy gold watch chain dangling. The sight 
of him was welcome to Minnie, who hailed him genially, 
as one does an old acquaintance, and promptly fell into a 
vivacious tone. She introduced him as her protege, who 
was much nicer, she said, than his language would lead 
one to suspect. While she was never sure that her own 
philosophy was right, she was always sure that his was 
wrong, and though he was good enough to associate with 
her, a mere Alpha Home working-girl, he was already a 
remarkably successful real estate dealer with the ambi- 
tion to house the vast majority of the population of the 
United States as soon as ever he graduated from her 
college. 

Abraham, who had not suspected that Minnie could, 
as he put it to himself, “bubble” like that, was greatly 
drawn to her. His own self-consciousness departed, and 
a mountain of preliminaries w^as removed to a free ap- 
proach to the little Minnie of Henry Street. He gave her 
a broad smile, while a soft feeling like the light of dawn 
crept into his heart. He remembered “Fights,” the 
“rock,” the bundle of refuse, the Essex Market Court. . . . 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 361 

He was startled out of his revery by hearing Minnie 
say: 

“Mr. Ratkin and I are going out for a walk. Won’t 
you and Amelia join us, Mr. Caplan?” Abraham, to his 
own surprise, felt resentful. On the street they soon 
paired off, and he had the chance to ask : 

“Who are these people?” He had exchanged enough 
words with Amelia to pigeonhole her “a foreign-born 
shop-girl.” No friends for Minnie, he thought. 

“Amelia lives in the Home, and she’s the only sensible 
girl I’ve met yet beside Ella Liebman, and Miss Liebman 
is busy with her own friends.” 

It flashed through Abraham’s mind that his sisters 
would supply a need of Minnie’s. 

“Do you spend Sundays with them? I mean, are they 
your friends ?” 

“They are.” 

Abraham was at a loss as to what to make of such 
incongruous matchings. His sisters were high-school 
girls and had high-school friends ; he himself was a col- 
lege man with college friends. An American girl, intelli- 
gent, quick-witted, to have a “kike” and a shop-girl as 
friends! It was out of the regular. He hoped Minnie 
did not have an addiction for the irregular, the odd — a 
particularly objectionable trait in a girl ; some of his col- 
lege mates had said so. She wasn’t like his sisters, that 
was certain. There w r as an airiness about her, a sort of 
effervescence, a kind of fanciness. Perhaps it was an 
instability. He thought of her lateness at Jacob’s grad- 
uation, which, for the reason she had given, he had at 
the time condoned; but perhaps such unusual behavior 
was characteristic of her. He was concerned and felt 
impelled to influence her to sobriety. Through a linking 


362 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


of ideas he now conjectured as to the reasons that had 
made her leave home. If the other two girls had stayed 
at home, the stepfather could not be an altogether impos- 
sible person. And how she had darted away on seeing 
her mother. How unnatural. Abraham made up his 
mind to draw Minnie out. 

But Minnie, of her own accord, went on talking about 
Mr. Caplan and Amelia. While she liked them, she said, 
they did not think as she did. In a way they did, in a 
way they didn’t. Did Abraham understand? 

Abraham did understand, and it was just what he had 
thought. He was glad she felt that way and was now 
convinced that he had been correct in supposing that she 
and his sisters ought to be friends. Promptly he formu- 
lated a program in his mind: he would take Minnie to 
visit them, would come to see her often, would help her 
choose the right books to read — guide her — lead her — 
form her. His schoolmaster’s soul was seeking exercise. 

XXXII 

When he had so efficiently planned a regimen for Min- 
nie, it provoked Abraham that even after his regular 
Sunday visits had continued for months she still retained 
her foreign-born friends. He could not, of course, tell 
her in so many words that she should drop them, but he 
felt it ought to have occurred to her naturally as the re- 
sult of his guiding, and he pondered what method to 
pursue to make her see the right light. One Sunday 
afternoon when they were out walking together, he said : 

“Don’t you think if you did not spend so much time 
teaching Mr. Caplan you would have more time to 
read?” 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 363 

Abraham had mapped out a course of reading, which 
included Gronlond’s Cooperative Commonwealth, to clear 
up Minnie’s muddled sentimental notions about social 
wrongs, Emerson’s essays for her general good, and Mar- 
tin’s Human Body to teach her hygiene, as her frequent 
paleness and tiredness made it obvious that she needed to 
know something about the care of the body. It was hard 
for her to plunge into this bony intellectuality from the 
live, pulsating world of Bernard Shaw, Ibsen, Tolstoi. 
So, half shyly, half complainingly, she had told him two 
or three times that the stuff was too dry, too hard. He 
objected, in the first place, to the terminology “stuff,” 
and it irritated him, besides, that she lacked docility. No 
one asks a child whether it does or does not want castor 
oil. The dose is simply administered, with a firm, even 
if tender hand. With the characteristic fluttering droop 
of his lids, he turned his head away in impatience, then 
with gentle firmness administered the necessary “Oh, 
now, come, come, settle down to it,” which disarmed 
her as to speech but not as to her intentions, since she 
was quite convinced that the “stuff” he wanted her to 
read had no power to illuminate her feelings. Abraham 
failed to take into consideration that with some people 
reason follows feeling as an offspring, and each has to 
go through its regular process of development else both 
thought and feeling remain forever aborted. 

“I have enough time,” she replied, lowering her eyes, 
somewhat ashamed that she could not muster the inclina- 
tion for the intellectuality to which Abraham aspired for 
her, “but really, Abraham, I don’t find it interesting. It’s 
so dry.” She gave a deprecatory smile and a questioning 
lift of her brows. “Maybe I’m stupid,” she added as if 
by the admission to gain exemption and absolution. 


364 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Her girlish manner attracted him, but her noncom- 
pliance was disappointing and displeasing. He was silent 
from impotence, wishing he could seat her beside him at 
a table and lead her step by step along the printed pages 
of the books he had recommended through rational proc- 
esses of thinking to absolute knowledge. Finally he 
said: 

“I suppose you think you know enough ; that if, for ex- 
ample, you get angry at poverty, you’ve found a solution, 
and if you are puzzled as to the existence of a God you 
have the whole of philosophy at your fingers’ tips, and 
if you take a physic you know how to keep well.” 

The false charge hurt. Minnie flushed and replied with 
spirit : 

“I don’t see how anybody can be surer that there is or 
there is not a God than I. He has not revealed Himself 
to others any more than He has to me. And I think 
poverty exists because people are selfish and grab. I 
imagine when people develop morally, then the problem 
will solve itself.” 

“You seem to be wiser than Plato and Aristotle and 
Socrates and Karl Marx all rolled into one.” Abraham 
smiled. 

They happened just then to be making a street-cross- 
ing, and a wagon dashing from around a corner at great 
speed bore right down on Minnie. She was in imminent 
danger. For a single instant Abraham stood petrified, 
then grabbed her arm and pulled her back on the pave- 
ment, and stood pale and panting for breath. Minnie 
laughed at the comical picture he presented. 

In that single moment of her danger there swept upon 
Abraham with almost hurricane force the knowledge of 
the extent to which he depended upon Minnie for his in- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


365 

terest in life. But she seemed so unreasonably indifferent 
as to whether or not she were run over that he could have 
shaken her. 

Perhaps it was just because she made it difficult for 
him to feel secure in his ruling power that she seemed 
so necessary to him. Prodigal children are said to be 
especially dear to their parents, and the schoolmaster’s 
soul is essentially paternal. 

XXXIII 

Abraham's visit left Minnie worn out, and she lay down 
on her bed to rest and think. 

Beside his course of reading he had prescribed friend- 
ship with his sisters. “In the three times that he’s taken 
me to see them,” she told herself, “I have been drawn to 
them less each time. They’re so everydaylike, so tame! 
I don’t see why he insists upon my doing things I don’t 
want to do.” Yet hand in hand with her resentment 
went equal displeasure with herself for not being able to 
respond to Abraham’s guidance. “I used to be so lonely 
and now he comes every Sunday. I ought to be very 
grateful.” Even at this urgence no gratitude sprang up 
in her heart, and she sank into dejection, into a feeling of 
heaviness, of being weighted down — the state, she now 
realized, in which Abraham invariably left her. Their 
talks never went smoothly. If she spoke hotly about the 
vast amount of poverty in the world and about the rich 
thinking they made it up to the poor by doling out char- 
ity, he called her a sentimentalist, told her she was rant- 
ing, and would do better to read on economics and social- 
ism and arrive at a sane, level-headed understanding of 
what the social evils were and what would eradicate 
them. If she told him of her differences with employees 


366 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


at the Charities, who were overbearing with applicants, 
he said she was hot-headed, as proved by her to-dos with 
her stepfather. 

“I don’t mean to hurt you, Minnie,” he would add 
when she looked hurt. “I am telling you only because I 
am interested in you. I wouldn’t take the trouble other- 
wise.” 

Lying on her bed thinking over these incidents of 
Abraham’s visits, Minnie felt that actually Abraham did 
mean it all for her good, and she wished she could work 
up enthusiasm for his erudite attitude toward life and 
things. 

She rose and examined herself in the small, rectangu- 
lar mirror screwed to the top of the chiffoniere. She 
was pretty, there was no denying it. “My eyes are beau- 
tiful. Everybody says so.” She smiled to her image, 
which, however, did not have consolation to offer for 
long. “Oh, goodness, I’m sick of this monotony. Every 
day it’s going to work and Amelia Rubin or Morris Cap- 
lan or Abraham Ratkin. In novels there are all kinds of 
experiences. Real life’s not like that at all.” She leaned 
closer to the glass and smoothed her hair away from her 
forehead. “I suppose if I had a home and didn’t go out 
working and went about in society, I’d be having lovers 
and proposals of marriage and evening dresses and every- 
thing.” A voice whispered to her: “Be glad you’re not 
bedridden in the Helina Heimath.” She shuddered and 
urged a pious mood upon herself. “I’ve lots to be grate- 
ful for. I can work and I’m not getting charity.” But 
her heart remained filled with longing, with restlessness, 
and yearning. 

Dispiritedly she went about making ready for supper. 
In the evening she expected her sisters, who would, for 
the first time, meet Morris Caplan, who was coming, not 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 367 

for an English lesson, but for a social call upon her and 
Amelia. 

Two hours later Ida was whispering disdainfully in 
Minnie’s ear: 

“Such a kike! Can’t you find better friends?” 

Minnie flushed. She felt ashamed. Why did she 
“keep friends” with Morris Caplan? He was a kike. 
That was the way Abraham must feel about him, too. 
But where was one to choose friends? What a nasty 
accent Morris Caplan still had. She would make him 
take lessons from someone else. She ought certainly to 
appreciate Abraham Ratkin, who was a college graduate. 
Yet her heart would not echo the admonition ; she could 
feel no warmth for Abraham even with his superior vir- 
tues. She yearned for others — for a different kind of 
friends, such as she could talk to without restraint, with- 
out the fear of being found fault with, or of not being 
understood. 

The rest of the evening she was so persistently silent 
that her companions remarked on it and made good- 
natured attempts to liven her up. When Morris Caplan 
took leave, she refused to shake hands. It was her first 
experience of a repugnance at being touched. The feel- 
ing stayed with her until her eyes closed in sleep. 

The next morning she awoke with a vast emptiness in 
her heart. She wished she could hide her head under the 
covers and never get up. 

“Don’t grumble,” she fought against the feeling as she 
dressed, “you’re better off than you ever thought you’d 
be. What if you’d have remained a shop-girl? You 
know shorthand, shorthand what the doctor friend of 
your youth” — she smiled — “and every other office mana- 
ger required. You’re working in an office, in an office! 
Think of it l” 


368 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Throughout the day the same restless dissatisfaction 
continued. Her work seemed meaningless, everything 
vapid, all about her hopeless. She felt like venting anger 
on someone. The talking and occasional giggling at the 
other desks annoyed her more than usually; and once, 
when a particularly loud burst of laughter went up, she 
had to grit her teeth. Her substitute of the Chayim 
Schlopoborsky episode was showing a postal card re- 
ceived from an applicant. One of the group handed the 
card to Minnie. 

“Plez ladi,” it ran, “kom kwik the boyler bust it's 2 
get dronded her and mi wif had a babi.” 

Before Minnie knew it, she was denouncing the girls 
hotly as heartless and disrespectful of the grief the card 
conveyed. They were flunkies, she told them, who did 
not see that there was no difference between the persons 
who applied for charity and the persons who supported 
the Charities. If anything, those who came for charity 
had been cheated, and those who bestowed charity had 
been the cheaters. 

When she ended, all out of breath and exhausted, she 
realized she had been foolish. Some of the girls looked 
frightened as though they were menace^, by an insane 
person ; others declared they had never seen or heard or 
met with such audacity, such impertinence, such impu- 
dence! The offended substitute vowed she would stand 
it no longer; Minnie had been “too fresh anyway” too 
often ; she would bring charges against her. 

XXXIV 

“Pm blue, Amelia, take a walk with me.” 

Minnie had knocked on Amelia’s door and, receiving 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


369 

no answer, had entered unceremoniously ; and Amelia, 
who had flung herself, tired out, on her bed for a nap, 
was awakened with a start by the sound of Minnie flop- 
ping into the wooden rocking-chair. 

“Gee, you scart me to deat’ !” 

“You’ll never learn to say ‘death’ until you’ve had the 
experience, I suppose.” 

Amelia laughed an unrestrained laugh. 

“Oh, come on, stop. Get your hat on,” said Minnie in 
a tone of annoyance. 

Amelia, who had used up her strength laughing, re- 
plied : 

“Honest, I kent go. I hev no Strang left.” 

Minnie, jumping up from her seat, cried in more than 
mock seriousness : 

“Upon my word, Amelia, you and Morris Caplan drive 
me wild with your lingo. I can’t think of a sin I’ve com- 
mitted to deserve the punishment of having to listen to 
you.” 

Amelia laughed again, but warned Minnie she was not 
to say anything against Morris Caplan. 

Was Amelia in love with him maybe? 

What did Minnie care? Amelia dropped her eyes and 
turned away so abruptly that Minnie was put on a hith- 
erto unsuspected scent. 

On the street there was silence between the girls for 
some time, Amelia having perceived Minnie’s nervousness 
and realizing that her accent actually did grate upon her. 
Minnie was the first to speak. 

“I’ve got something to tell you.” 

Amelia’s heart gave a leap. Perhaps Morris Caplan. 
who clearly was attracted to Minnie, had proposed to her. 
For a moment the world was a great empty place to 


370 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Amelia, then loyalty to her friend asserted itself above 
alarm on her own account. She smiled a sickly smile, 
and from between pale lips came the query: 

“Did Morris Caplan propose to you?” 

“Why, no!” 

So Amelia was in love with Morris Caplan and was 
jealous! Goodness, all the months that Minnie had been 
giving him lessons she must have been hurting Amelia! 
She remembered Abraham’s advice to terminate the les- 
sons. Amelia, too, would probably have been glad. Min- 
nie saw a dull, depressing vista ahead of empty evenings 
without calls or lessons. It was hard. And Amelia was 
actually in love — in love as in books. She, Minnie, would 
like to be in love, too ; her life was so horribly dull and 
empty. But with whom ? Abraham ? She shrank within 
herself. Then, as if by stealth, her thoughts touched 
Morris Caplan but instantly withdrew in shame. 

Amelia roused her by saying: 

“I guess you guess.” 

“Yes.” 

They walked on in silence. After a time, Amelia re- 
marked meditatively: 

“He don’t care for me.” 

Minnie made no answer. From her experience of love 
in literature Morris Caplan did not, indeed, seem to care 
for Amelia, and she could not offer false comfort. 

“I think he loves you,” Amelia vouchsafed, smiling 
wistfully and with a nod that said: “No need to deny 
it.” 

Minnie threw her head back and laughed. 

“Oh, heavens ! I believe you’re jealous. You need not 
be; you may be sure it isn’t so, not on his side nor on 
mine.” 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


37i 


But Amelia was not so sure. 

Minnie had invited Amelia out to unburden herself of 
a new worry — the loss of her position. The chief clerk 
of the Charities, without giving Minnie a hearing, had 
decided from the nature of the offended substitute’s com- 
plaint that Minnie was of “that sort” — an anarchist ; one 
who disseminates dissatisfaction, dissension, and in a 
pinch throws a bomb; the Charities was safer without 
such. 

Delicacy of feeling prompted Minnie to refrain from 
obtruding her trouble upon Amelia at this time. 

* * * * * * 

“I beg leave to make application for the position of 
stenographer as per your advertisement in this morning’s 
New York World.” 

Minnie was phrasing the letter in her mind as she lay 
in bed that night, prevented from sleeping by a complex 
of thoughts and emotions. What disturbed her almost 
as much as the loss of her position was the reason for the 
loss. “I told them the truth and so I became a dangerous 
person!” The injustice of it hurt. To want to right a 
wrong — was that to be dangerous? There ought to be 
some redress, some justice. But there wasn’t, and the 
realization that there wasn’t sickened her with impo- 
tence. . . . And Abraham — Abraham would term what 
she had done an “hysterical outburst;” in fact, he had 
foretold dismissal. Again a reprimand ! She shrank at 
the thought. How she hated and dreaded these repri- 
mands of his ! For what ? For standing up for the right. 
How anyone could think her conduct anything but right 
puzzled her enormously. . . . Morris Caplan had prom- 
ised her a position if she were ever in need of one, but 
now she couldn’t accept his offer on account of Amelia. 
. . . To think that that prosaic Amelia was in love, actu- 


372 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

ally in love as in books ! Was Morris Caplan in love with 
Amelia and was there anything she could do to further 
the match? ... It would be marvelous to be in love, 
too. She wondered whether she ever would be in love 
and what the emotions were like ; whether she could love 
deeply. She glided over the past and wondered where 
Louis “the paintner” could now be; whether he ever 
thought of her; whether she would ever see him again. 
She wondered what would have happened to her had she 
actually married him ; perhaps she would now be a 
mother of several children, the prototype of Mrs. Argush. 
She shuddered. ... As by a breeze her thoughts were 
wafted upon a future with a gallant knight, learned and 
tremendously enamored of her, declaring himself pas- 
sionately, proclaiming her the epitome of all the womanly 
virtues. . . Then disgust for the commonplaceness of 

her life fell upon her. She crossed her ams, placed one 
hand on each shoulder and strained herself to herself. 
“Oh, gosh darn it ! ding it ! the deuce ! the dickens ! I’m 
sick of it! If I were not poor, if I had a home and the 
proper protection, I could be a free human being. To 
think that I am made jobless because I held out for what 
I considered right ! I hate dependence upon other people 
— hate it — hate it — hate it !” 

XXXV 

Mr. John Maloney, proprietor of the Maloney Paper 
Box Company, was a genial, blue-eyed Irishman, whose 
sense of humor, which for a while was daunted by a 
siege of incompetent stenographers, came into its own 
again with the acquisition of Mildred Mendel. When 
Mr. Maloney recognized in Minnie a competent worker 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


373 


and was sure of her remaining “steady,” he told her 
some of his bitter experiences with a view to making him- 
self roar (there was nothing he enjoyed quite so much) 
and to hearing the girl’s young, merry, responsive giggle 
— to say nothing of her dancing gray eyes. 

“I asked one of ’em to write ‘the boxes which ye have 
is no good.’ She wrote ‘the w-i-t-c-h ye have is no good,’ 
and I told her if that letter had gone out, I could ’a been 
arrested for interfering in family affairs.” His thunder- 
ing roar, emanating from a region of layers of bulging 
belly, filled the office with itself and reverberations and 
caused Minnie to add her laughter of pleasure. 

How Minnie liked John Maloney. He was the first 
person of the kind she had ever met, a free-and-easy, 
genial, good-hearted, good-natured, hearty, natural crea- 
ture. 

And John Maloney reciprocated the feeling. She was 
the first of her kind he had met, a girl who could give 
quick, ready response, serious or funny, who could ruffle 
her forehead like a grandmother and could giggle like a 
schoolgirl. “She’s a smart kid, by heck,” he would say 
to the salesmen and others of the staff. And soon a cor- 
dial relationship between the two was established. 

All of w’hich circumstances were gleefully imparted to 
Abraham, who would listen paternally as Minnie nar- 
rated the happenings of the intervals between his visits. 
Occasionally he would jerk her back by the reins, as it 
were, quietly, as if by his very manner to inculcate some 
of his composure, which he so regretted was lacking in 
her. 

“You go at things so spiritedly. Your enthusiasm 
must necessarily be short-lived. How long, after all, 


374 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


have you known Mr. Maloney? Two months, and you 
already think so well of him? ,, 

Her enthusiastic recitals, all to the purpose of boosting 
a John Maloney, who, sanely analyzed and properly 
pigeonholed, was a mere Irish paper-box merchant, pro- 
duced upon Abraham the impression that Minnie was 
extravagant in the expenditure of energy, of which, he 
was convinced, she had none too much, because his sis- 
ters were stouter and able to walk much farther than 
she. What a way she had of exaggerating ! As at the 
Charities, with her idea of cheaters and cheated, and now 
she never said a word about the Charities — blown from 
her horizon like thistledown. He sighed with the hard- 
ship of managing her. Abraham believed he was indig- 
nant wholly on Minnie’s account; and it is a shame to 
have to give him away, but the fact was, Abraham was 
jealous. 

Minnie’s enthusiasm seemed to remove her farther 
away from him than did her mere disobedience. He had 
an actual physical sensation of her slipping out of his 
hands. To be sure, a very definite something had oc- 
curred several weeks earlier to shake him. He and 
Minnie had unexpectedly encountered Morris Caplan. 
As this was the first time she had seen Mr. Caplan after 
Amelia’s confession, she promptly carried out her reso- 
lution to give Amelia no further occasion for jealousy. 
Then and there she blurted out in a half-laughing, half- 
serious way, that she would have to give up teaching him 
because she was going to be very busy. So much to 
Abraham’s intense gratification. But the very next mo- 
ment the sun went behind a cloud. Morris Caplan at 
first refused to take Minnie seriously, then, as she per- 
sisted, his face reddened and fell into troubled lines. He 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 375 

looked sincerely forlorn. He begged her, regardless of 
Abraham’s presence, not to put him so mercilessly adrift. 
Minnie’s heart was touched. Deciding she would tell 
Amelia with the greatest persuasiveness — and convince 
her, too — that she need not be jealous, she succumbed to 
Morris Caplan’s pleadings. Abraham suspected Minnie’s 
acquiescence arose from a tender feeling for Morris 
Caplan, and resented it, though scarcely acknowledging 
his resentment to himself. (It is really taking a liberty 
to acknowledge it for him.) 

Since that time still other things had arisen to ruffle 
his serene sky. Once Minnie had refused to let him come 
to see her simply because she was in no mood for his 
disciplining ; and once when he took her to task for hav- 
ing yielded to Morris Caplan’s persuasion, she actually 
championed her pupil, actually declared he had lots of 
excellent qualities in spite of his accent and “kikish” man- 
ners. 

Froward Minnie ! Yet there is no washing one’s hands 
easily of tar. Something about Minnie clung to Abra- 
ham’s heart, which made him pensive, restless, unsatis- 
fied, anxious to keep her steered close to his own shore. 
This easy swimming of hers into other waters gave him 
the sensation of his own drowning. 

XXXVI 

Mrs. Ratkin hesitated before definitely diagnosing her 
son’s case, but once certain of his ailment she knew no 
peace. She had greater ambitions for her boy. Girls 
were easily enough to be had. Abraham, so educated, so 
gentle, so moral ! whom could he not aspire to matri- 
monially? She sighed many a heavy sigh over the fate 


376 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

he had selected. Love was a matter of propinquity ; had 
he chosen to visit another girl every Sunday for a year, 
he could just as readily have fallen in love with her. Not 
that, God forbid! anything really disparaging could be 
said against Minnie Mendel. She was a nice girl, but 
there were nice girls who were also pretty, strong, 
wealthy, of real nice families. Why could not Abraham 
have chosen one of those? “Nice family” stuck in her 
mind especially. Had not the Mendel family the skeleton 
of an arrest — not like the one that had come about in her 
family, by an accident — but a real one, a premeditated 
one? Mrs. Ratkin sighed. Abraham was too modest al- 
ways. His aspirations never rose high enough. 

She left this bed of thought and heart-sickness one 
day resolved to pay Sarah a visit. Perhaps her conjec- 
tures after all were incorrect. Abraham had said noth- 
ing to her; she had merely drawn conclusions from his 
preoccupation, his reduced appetite, his frequent visits to 
Minnie Mendel. Tactfully she would lead Sarah on to 
talk. Sarah, Mrs. Ratkin reasoned, saw the two together 
often enough and doubtless knew her daughter’s feelings. 
Mrs. Ratkin sighed and hoped. 

Abraham had never told his mother that Minnie, like 
Jacob, had left home on account of the stepfather. The 
whole situation, he was satisfied, could have been avoided 
if only Minnie had been normally tolerant ; he had shrunk 
from eliciting the same criticism from his mother. From 
the first his attitude toward Minnie had been a protec- 
tive one. While assuming the right to criticize her, since 
his motives were the tenderest, he felt he must shield her 
from the criticism of others. 

***** * 

Sarah was alone in the house. It was a Sunday after- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


377 


noon. The girls were visiting Minnie, and Leopold Pol- 
lack was seeking business advice from Mrs. Tannenbaum, 
as the bands business was declining steadily. The style 
had undergone a radical change, from hats raised at one 
side and in the back to hats flat all around, so that bands 
were going out of use. The matter had given Sarah and 
Leopold many days and nights of worry, and Leopold 
was now gone to see if their business friend could sug- 
gest any steps for them to take. Sarah would have ac- 
companied him had she not been feeling indisposed. 

She sat thinking of how the years had flown, how the 
children had grown up, how close to all being over the 
game was drawing, how queer all of life was. What a 
stubborn, heartless one Minnie was! Sarah had never 
forgiven her the cruel slight on the evening of Jacob’s 
graduation. 

In this mood it was that Mrs. Ratkin came in upon her. 

Minnie ? Indeed, Minnie had spurned her mother and 
her home the very day Leopold Pollack had come into it, 
as if he were a veritable bum and as if her mother had 
committed a vile crime in marrying again. 

For the very reason that Sarah felt that Mrs. Ratkin 
was critical of her, she exaggerated her grievances and 
even indulged in a rhapsody of self-praise so that Min- 
nie’s undutifulness might stand out the more flagrant. 
She had sent the fatherless girl to high school. By four 
children she had performed the duties of both parents. 
What amount of appreciation was sufficient? And to 
think that Minnie had quibbled about a little more work, 
a little less work, about every little thing. And then her 
heartlessness — to have shunned her own mother and Leo- 
pold at Jacob’s graduation ! Something no mother could 
forgive. And now her crazy stunts — lost an excellent 


373 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


position at the Peoples Charities, a position of eminence, 
because of some crazy anarchistic notions. 

“God mine ! God mine !” thought Mrs. Ratkin. “If he 
really wants this girl, he must be crazy.” She would nip 
the thing in the bud with the strictest maternal inter- 
vention. She sat up straighter, her chin set itself more 
firmly, and her mother-love and mother-pride joined in 
staunch mobilization against her son’s threatening enemy, 
Minnie Mendel. 

When she had gone, Sarah awoke to the stinging con- 
sciousness of having blurted out things she should never 
have said. She could have bit her tongue off. Why had 
she taken Mrs. Ratkin — Mrs. Ratkin of all women — into 
her confidence ? Mrs. Ratkin, who had nothing but praise 
for her own children, who even exaggerated their vir- 
tues. Sarah hated herself. When the girls came home, 
and intending to make her laugh, told her of Minnie and 
Morris Caplan, she ordered them angrily to keep quiet, 
slammed the door of her bedroom shut, and locked her- 
self in. 

XXXVII 

Toward evening Abraham returned from his visit to 
Minnie, which he had shared with Morris Caplan and Ida 
and Beckie. She had told stories of John Maloney and of 
several experiences with him in restaurants to which he 
had taken her to lunch. Abraham had found her witty, 
gay, arch, charming. His delighted spirits still hovered 
around her. If only she would lend herself to sensible 
discipline, if she would read properly, begin to think 
properly, what a splendid all-around girl she would be! 
From out of the depth of his feeling he was ready to 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


379 


send up a prayer for the power to instil this desirable 
quality into her. A yearning for Minnie as his wife laid 
itself like a warm, velvety hand upon his heart. 

He and his mother were home alone together. All 
through supper he was silent, the while Mrs. Ratkin 
watched him closely. Had Abraham watched his mother 
just as closely, he would have seen she was hot and ner- 
vous, that her hands shook when she served him, and 
that she sighed and sighed. Finally he left the table and 
went into the Mission-furnished library to read. Mrs. 
Ratkin cleared the table, every moment or two peering 
into the library. She was waiting for a moment when 
she could feel sure of a steady voice. At last she walked 
to the threshold between the two rooms and called : 

“Abe.” 

He looked up from his book. “Yes, mother.” 

“Are you there?” 

Always when his mother appended this needless query, 
Abraham would smile and flatter his eyelids, and reply 
tenderly, as though speaking to a child : 

“No, mother, I am not.” 

And always Mrs. Ratkin would smile loving apprecia- 
tion upon her son. This time, however, there was no 
smile. She coughed and straightened the front of her 
shirtwaist. 

“Abe,” she began, obviously steadying her voice, “tell 
me the truth, are you in love with Minnie Mendel ?” 

Abraham flushed scarlet. He was too taken aback to 
make immediate reply. Then a feeling of deep tender- 
ness for his mother and Minnie — as if they were one — 
came into his heart. He dropped his eyes and answered 
caressingly : 

“Yes, mother.” 


380 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Mrs. Ratkin went white. 

“Do you know her well?” she asked, her voice con- 
trolled, her eyes fixed steadfastly upon her son. 

“Why, yes,” he replied, with an embarrassed smile. 

“But do you?” the mother insisted, her voice rising. 
“I visited her mother to-day. Her mother herself says 
the girl is crazy — is a crazy anarchist — quarrelsome, did 
not stay a moment in the house after the stepfather, a 
perfect gentleman, came into it — has been knocking 
around in all sorts of strange places rather than live with 
her own mother. Do you, my son, know all these 
things ?” 

“Yes, mother,” Abraham replied, his forehead ruffled, 
a look of displeasure coming into his eyes and a note of 
irritation into his voice. 

“Well, if you do — are there not plenty of nice girls in 
the city of New York?” 

“Mother,” Abraham replied, “you must not speak this 
way. You do not know Minnie ” 

Mrs. Ratkin experienced an overwhelming sense of 
having lost, which, however, was at once supplanted by 
a more vigorous spirit of fight. 

“Oh, you, too, must be crazy !” she shouted. 

This was the first time in all the years that Mrs. Rat- 
kin had forgotten her latter-day, well-learned mother- 
dignity. 

Abraham flushed. 

“Mother!” he cried, rising from his seat and holding 
her down with his glance. But Mrs. Ratkin was not 
daunted. 

“No girl,” she cried, “who does not live at home is 
worth being courted.” 

The thought crossed Abraham’s mind that Minnie 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 381 

ought really to live at home, and he averted his eyes as 
if fearing his mother might read the thought. 

“How — what sort of a way is it for a decent girl to 
live with strangers when she has her own family ?” Mrs. 
Ratkin shrugged her shoulders in blended disgust and in- 
comprehension. 

Here Abraham interrupted with greater sharpness than 
was his wont. 

“Mother, you do not know her.” 

Mrs. Ratkin’s objections were not a whit lessened, but 
she saw her son was unbendable, and keeping as much 
bitterness out of her tone as she could she said : 

“Very well, my son, I hope you will not live to rue it.” 

The remainder of the evening was spent by both in 
deep reflection. 

“Minnie must be reconciled to her mother,” Abraham 
decided. 

“So he has actually asked the girl to marry him !” 

Though Mrs. Ratkin’s heart bled with anguish, she 
refused to believe. It could not be that such a calamity 
was to befall her boy — and her, his mother. There are 
prospective mothers-in-law whom only the wedding-day 
convinces. 


XXXVIII 

Abraham Ratkin had to keep his bed with a cold and 
fever for three weeks, during which fate formed its own 
web. 

Though Minnie, to all outward appearances, was vi- 
vacious and cheerful, in the secret recesses of her being 
she was restless and filled with longing. Her heart was 
reaching out, unaccountably, to the inexplicable some- 


382 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


thing to which all youth feels it has a claim, as if life were 
planned for giving full satisfaction. Many a time after 
her friends’ visits she would go to her room to drop 
down on her bed with a great aching emptiness in her 
heart. 

During the weeks that Abraham was ill she was par- 
ticularly lonely and brooding ; a fact upon which a num- 
ber of people at the Maloney Paper Box office remarked, 
so that Mr. Maloney bestowed upon her numerous side 
glances of apprehension. Was she, he wondered, like 
himself, finding their mere office association inadequate? 

A plan had arisen and revolved in his mind and each 
day drew nearer to fruition, when one morning Minnie 
came suddenly upon him with the announcement that 
she had decided to give up her position in his office. 

XXXIX 

On an evening when Minnie was in a particularly dis- 
gruntled mood, she entered the dining-room for supper 
to find Amelia Rubin in tears. Amelia was hungry, and 
the supper, it seemed, was not graciously putting itself 
out to cater to her appetite. The soup was not the sort 
she liked, the meat was tough, the boiled potato was 
soapy, the spinach, to her taste an atrocity at best, was 
gritty, and her share of lettuce was withered as if from 
old age. Amelia looked up at Minnie with tears in her 
eyes. It was the busy season “by shirtwaists,” and the 
over- worked Amelia poured out the list of her hardships 
in almost one breath. The greatest of her grievances was 
that at the officers’ table sat the pudgy, under-worked 
matron with a dish of lettuce verily of the class of the 
Elite of the Vegetable Kingdom. Did she deserve it 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


383 


more than Amelia? As if Amelia had not slaved the 
whole day ! As if the matron toiled any harder, as if 
what was good for her was not good for Amelia, too ! 

Less than this was needed to rouse Minnie's ire that 
evening. She had gone about from task to task during 
the day in morose silence, with a deep distaste for the pet- 
tinesses that filled her life. She yearned, she ached, for 
she hardly knew what — for some onward, upward, for- 
ward stride. Impulsively she grabbed up Amelia's plate 
of lettuce and stalked with it over to the matron’s table. 
She demanded, red in the face, quivering from head to 
foot with indignation and looking fierce enough to throw 
the lettuce in the matron’s face : 

“Do you call this fit to eat?” 

Girls at nearby tables suspended all activity, whether 
chatting or the consuming of food, and gaped open- 
mouthed.' It was an unprecedented impertinence. No 
one had ever before dared to break the sacred convention 
of utmost respect due the matron. The worthy lady 
raised herself slightly from her chair. 

“How DARE you?" 

“How dare YOU?" 

Minnie deliberately emptied Amelia's plate of its let- 
tuce, took several leaves from the matron’s plate, stalked 
back with it, head high, to Amelia’s table, and set the 
Better Goods before her, under her breath muttering: 
“Mean, unfair, unjust." Then she retired to her room, 
where she threw herself down on the bed. 

In a few moments there came a summons from the 
superintendent. Minnie went to the office prepared to de- 
fend her misdemeanor. 

“Well, Mildred Mendel, what’s this I hear about you?” 
“I did it." 


384 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Have you any excuse to offer?” 

“Yes.” 

“What?” 

“I don’t think it’s fair. Amelia was just as tired, just 
as hungry as the matron and deserved nice lettuce, too.” 

“What was the matter with the lettuce?” 

“It was rotten.” 

“Couldn’t Amelia tell about it without your quarrel- 
some interference?” 

“It was no accident that the matron’s lettuce was nice 
and Amelia’s bad. It was an unfair discrimination. It 
happens lots of times. The matron ought not to eat in 
the same room at the same time, then.” 

The superintendent laughed. 

“You’re a regular little anarchist, eh?” 

“I don’t know what you call it.” 

The superintendent whisked her under the chin, and 
her manner said something about Minnie being awfully 
young. 

“Where do you work now ?” 

“In a paper-box house.” 

The superintendent reflected. 

“Are you sort of unhappy about things?” 

How had the superintendent guessed! Minnie’s eye- 
lids quivered. She made no reply. 

“I know of a position that is open in the Academy Set- 
tlement, secretary to the headworker. It would be a nice 
environment for you. Do you think you would like the 
change ?” 

The darling, wonderful superintendent! Always she 
was doing something just great. Minnie’s heart fairly 
melted with regret at having caused a disturbance, and if 
she had not felt that justice was on her side, she might 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 385 

have said she was sorry. As it was, she only wiped tears 
from her eyes and thanked the superintendent. 

Three hours later she was the engaged secretary of 
Doctor Evangel ; and the following morning she gave 
notice to John Maloney that in a week she would leave. 

XL 

“Yer a foolish kid. I’d keep on raising ye till ye’d be 
dizzy.” 

Minnie laughed, though she felt badly at having to dis- 
appoint Mr. Maloney. 

When he had been finally convinced of her inflexibility, 
he had assumed an aggrieved attitude, and for a few 
days had scarcely a word to say to her, which caused her 
sincere pain, so that one noontime when he invited her 
to lunch, she accepted with no mincing of eagerness, and 
at once dropped her work, washed her hands, and donned 
her hat and coat. Mr. Maloney observed that she had 
difficulty in keeping the tears back. He himself was feel- 
ing rather mournful. 

He chose a new dining-place, and, what surprised Min- 
nie more, requested a private dining-room. 

"I'll miss ye, kid,” he said, when they were seated and 
the waiter had disappeared with the order. 

“You will not be too angry to come to see me, Mr. 
Maloney?” Minnie asked earnestly. 

“But what makes ye so stubborn about leaving ?” He 
resorted to persuasion again. “What’s in a settlement 
house? Hard work, small pay, long hours — ‘exploitation,’ 
as ye yourself call it.” Mr. Maloney almost emitted a 
roar, but the occasion was too solemn to permit of the 


386 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


indulgence, and he only smiled, Minnie accompanying 
him with a sorry attempt at the same. 

“Give up the idea, kid,” he tried again. 

“I don’t like business ; it does not interest me.” 

Mr. Maloney raised his eyes hastily in involuntary dis- 
approval of the words so uncomplimentary to his Sacred 
Covenant with Paper Boxes. 

“But yer interested in that there other thing, too — that 
there social justice stunt. If ye do less in the day, ye 
have more time and ambition for the other at night.” 
With sudden fresh enthusiasm he added: “Ugh, I know 
those settlement joints. The gerrls work there till they’re 
old maids.” This with a glance at Minnie that said “Be- 
ware !” 

Minnie, to whom the idea was new, burst out laugh- 
ing. Ordinarily Mr. Maloney could not have resisted the 
infection of her laugh. The vital matter in his mind 
pinned him down to sobriety. He surveyed his finger- 
nails, then dug them deep into his palm. 

“Mildred,” he began quaveringly, his breath coming 
short (the “Mildred” startled her as he had always ad- 
dressed her as “Miss Mendel”), “will ye be willing to 
marry me?” 

Minnie stared. Was the man who had just spoken 
Mr. John Maloney, her employer, proprietor of the Ma- 
loney Paper Box Company? She was mute. 

The waiter appeared with the order. Sensing some- 
thing (in the way of waiters), he set the dishes down 
hastily and disappeared with a faint, knowing grin. 

Minnie’s heart-beats thundered so in her ears that she 
was afraid Mr. Maloney would hear them. She fast- 
ened her eyes on her bowl of cereal. 

“Well, Mildred,” Mr. Maloney said eagerly when the 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 387 

door had closed on the waiter, “I’m a rich feller; I’ll take 
good care of ye. And that there social justice business” 
(Minnie had told him the circumstances of her discharge 
from the Charities) “don’t cut no ice with me; ye kin 
go as far as ye like with me.” Mr. Maloney was pleased 
with his indulgent spirit and returned the upper half of 
his profuse body to the back of his chair with an air of 
self-esteem. 

Minnie still sat speechless. Wiping his forehead with 
an exceptionally large handkerchief, Mr. Maloney con- 
tinued : 

“If ye were married to a rich man, ye could do yer 
settlement work better even — ye could do anything ye 
please.” 

Minnie’s mind was startled out of itself. Her imagi- 
nation launched her upon membership in the Ladies’ Aid 
Society of the Helina Heimath, donned her with clothes 
of simple, expensive, subdued elegance, rendered her 
benefactress of countless ice-cream-and-cake treats to 
the children of the Heimath, gave her the opportunity 
to shake hands society fashion (from up down) with 
the superintendent of the Heimath, and endowed her with 
the right to engage another matron for the Alpha Home. 

She was jostled out of her fancies by Mr. Maloney, fat 
and forty, who, interpreting her silence favorably, had 
ardently emitted : 

“Darling!” He was leaning forward in his seat. His 
moist, fat hand sought to enslave hers. 

She snatched her hand away under the shock of a 
physical revulsion such as only the aesthetic young know. 

“Oh, Mr. Maloney!” she gasped. 

Fear that it would not be such smooth sailing pierced 
Mr. Maloney’s heart. He rose and came closer. Minnie 


3 88 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


also rose. Mr. Maloney wanted to, but dared not, take 
her in his arms. 

“I can give ye everything money can buy,” he said 
limply in comparison with the fervor of his feelings. 
“What have ye now, living in a working gerrls’ home, 
with ten dollars a week wages — better — look at the ad- 
vantages.” He spread his hands. They extended only 
a little beyond his huge bulk, and Minnie noticing it 
turned sick. Then, too, the “New Woman” in her, whom 
she had come to know through her reading, was out- 
raged. With a trace of histrionicism, she asked : 

“Do you think I can be bought like merchandise ?” 

Mr. Maloney winced. He had not expected that Min- 
nie would be unwilling. Secretly he thought : “That little 
snipper!” Aloud he said: “Wait till yer a bit older. 
Ye’ll be glad to git a feller like me ; they don’t grow 
in five-and-ten-cent stores.” 

Minnie reached for her coat. He^took it, and, while 
helping her on with it, tried to snatch a kiss. Minnie 
shuddered and withdrew. Her vision played her a trick : 
Mr. Maloney spread and multiplied into the foreman of 
the Titanic Biscuit Company, the Doctor of the past, 
Louis “the paintner.” 

Mr. Maloney took hasty notice of the fact that most 
of the food they had ordered remained on the table un- 
touched, and he was not without regret on this detail 
as he led the way out. 


XLI 

That same evening Abraham, who had recovered from 
his cold, came to call on Minnie. The news of her 
change of position annoyed him immensely. Could she 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


389 


not have waited for advice ? The gross folly of return- 
ing to charity work when it was such a trial to her tem- 
per! Before long she would again be playing ball with 
“cheaters” and “cheated” — getting herself into trouble — 
losing another position. Wasn’t the very lettuce incident 
evidence? Abraham fairly puffed with disapproval. He 
rose and made nervous strides across the Alpha Home 
sitting-room. 

Minnie sat self-conscious and mortally put out by his 
eternal faultfinding. She could have bitten her tongue off 
for having spoken. She had made up her mind innum- 
erable times to refrain from taking him into her confi- 
dence, and then had prattled, prattled like a ridiculous 
child. Just because she grew so tense she couldn’t keep 
things to herself. She was thoroughly disgusted with 
herself for growing so tense. 

As Abraham paced the room the slit of the back of his 
coat, opening and closing alternately, revealed and hid a 
small button. It revolted Minnie, and as she watched the 
movement of Abraham’s thin legs, she felt a vague dis- 
like of him creep upon her. As if to get farther away 
from him, she drew deeper into her chair. If only he 
would sit down. Yet she felt an indescribable respect for 
him and was grateful for his interest in her. Wearied by 
her conflicting feelings, she sighed and covered her eyes 
with her hands. When she removed them, after a time, 
she saw Abraham, who thought she was in tears, stand- 
ing in front of her. Since she was not in tears, he re- 
tired to his chair, from where he regarded her fixedly 
and began to talk of what was greatly on his mind. 

“Minnie, you know you are a young woman now, 
nearly twenty. Soon you’ll be thinking of getting mar- 
ried.” 


390 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Minnie’s heart leaped. She thought of Mr. Maloney. 
She gave Abraham a hasty look of inquiry. 

“Do you know, Minnie, your being away from home 

is going to speak against you ” He hesitated, his 

eyelids fluttering. He scarcely knew how to say what 
had been on his heart to say the whole three weeks of 
his interfering illness. 

Speak against her! As if love needed credentials! 
She flushed and scowled. What would be his next step 
in the mathematical mapping out of her life? 

“A man has his family to satisfy. A girl who does not 
live at home is sort of — sort of looked down upon.” His 
heart ached ; he hated to hurt her. As if to stifle a sigh, 
he brought his hand up to his mouth with self-conscious 
clumsiness. A sharp, fierce resentment of Abraham 
seized Minnie and at the same time a lunatic fear that 
he might touch her. She shrank back visibly. 

Some girls entered the room and Abraham suggested a 
walk, checking the refusal on Minnie’s lips by handing 
her her hat, which she had brought down in preparation 
for their customary stroll. 

“I am convinced, Minnie,” he said, when they were on 
the street, “that you ought to go home to your people. 
The other girls find it possible to stay at home. I don’t 
see why you can’t, too. It would be so much more de- 
cent.” 

It was like a physical onslaught. Presently the acute 
sensation of shock passed over into indignation. He was 
prescribing by formula. Soon he would be telling her 
to mould her nose into the shape of some one else’s. In- 
dividual circumstances did not exist for him ; all people 
must act in the same way, have the same feelings, the 
same thoughts. She hated him. She wished she could 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


391 


run away from him. As in the old days with “Fights,” 
so now again he was reducing her to impotence and ir- 
resoluteness. 

“Have you ever thought how a man in love with you 
would feel about your living in a working-girls’ home?” 

A childish passion to prove him in the wrong pos- 
sessed her. 

“Don’t be so sure you know how every man would 
feel,” she burst out. “Mr. Maloney asked me to marry 
him and he knows I live in the Home. There now !” 

There were more things seething within her that would 
not frame themselves into words. 

Abraham spun round like a top. His hat tipped a little 
to one side, and his lips parted. 

“What was that?” he asked. 

“YES ! You heard right !” She drew away from him. 

They walked several blocks in silence. Abraham was 
thinking: “She is indignant. Poor little girl. Perhaps I 
am too critical. It must be hard for her to realize that I 
love her so when I am always finding fault. What dif- 
ference does it really make that she lives in a home? 
Mama will come round when she gets to know her bet- 
ter. With all her faults she is mighty sweet, mighty 
sweet.” He recalled her pretty repartee, her merry laugh. 
He forgave her everything from the bottom of his heart, 
and felt nothing but tenderness for her. He smiled in- 
dulgently at the thought of Mr. Maloney, a gentile, fat, 
elderly, aspiring Minnieward. He looked round at his 
Minnie. Her face was pale and troubled. He took her 
by the elbow. Poor little girl. 

They walked on in silence. This evening he would not 
tell her, he decided. He would wait until Sunday when 
he would be feeling better and she would be in a more 


392 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


suitable frame of mind. His thoughts journeyed pleas- 
antly to a few years hence when he would be sufficiently 
advanced as to salary and the sweet creature beside him 
would be his own little wife. 

As he was still a convalescent and the prescribed hour 
for going to bed was nine o’clock, he very tenderly sug- 
gested that they return to the Alpha Home, so that he 
might take leave, so tenderly, indeed, that Minnie looked 
at him once to make sure, and a second time to express 
gratitude. 

4 = * * * * * 

Morris Caplan’s bank account was not doing him any 
special good that he could see. The muffled sounds of his 
first-class boarding-house were getting on his nerves. 
There were evenings when he felt moved to pound on 
its walls merely for the sake of disturbing the gentility 
of the atmosphere. On other evenings, of milder moods, 
he had visions of a home of his own, the patter of chil- 
dren’s feet, a refined woman’s voice ; and if these hap- 
pened to be lesson evenings, he found extra delight in 
Minnie’s company and allowed himself to hope for a 
happy future. But when he compared himself with 
Abraham Ratkin, a college graduate, who was also in the 
arena, his hopes paled. 

“Kike,” he would rebuke himself for his audacity, 
“where do you creep?” and he would try to forget him- 
self in the company of gayer young women with whom 
he would skip off to dances, vaudeville shows, and late- 
hour eating-houses. He would spend lavishly and con- 
duct himself like an all-round good sport, overdoing 
everything to work the self-depreciation out of his sys- 
tem. Afterwards he would return to his room to brood 
and philosophize that all the world’s a fool and he not 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


393 


the least of fools in it. One evening, in a charitable 
frame of mind toward himself, he allowed that after all 
he wasn't such a bad “feller," he would make a good 
husband; at thirty-six a man was bound to know how to 
treat a woman. With money to bum and a good heart 
to boot, why might he not be as desirable as a whipper- 
snapper of an Abraham Ratkin, who, though he boasted 
an intellectual forehead, could provide a wife with no 
greater luxury than bread and cheese? “He thinks he 
takes the cake!" Before long Morris Caplan saw him- 
self as not so unworthy a competitor and as mighty much 
of a damn fool for having waited so long before at least 
giving himself a chance. “Why, the girl might actually 
be caring for me !" He swelled. “Otherwise why would 
she keep on giving me lessons and without accepting 
pay ?" He owed it to himself and to her at least to “find 
out, to make sure one way or ‘die yadder.' " 

He reached the Alpha Home just as Abraham Ratkin 
was taking leave. 

For his part, Morris Caplan was mighty pleased that 
colds were included in the scheme of things, so that 
Abraham Ratkin was obliged just then to keep early 
hours. Morris Caplan’s satisfaction reached Abraham, 
who scowled, and would have changed his mind and 
stayed, had he not been afraid of appearing ridiculous. 

The moment Morris Caplan and Minnie entered the 
Alpha Home sitting-room, she dropped into a chair, gave 
a whistling sigh, threw her hands up and laughed tear- 
fully. Naturally, Morris Caplan was curious. Minnie 
exploded. 

“Oh, he makes me sick and tired. He wears me out. 
He is forever trying to make me over. I am always at 
fault about everything, everywhere, every time, now, for- 


394 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


ever, and a day later.” She laughed again and shook 
herself as if to throw off Abraham’s presence. The tears 
were in her eyes, and her feelings were tense enough to 
have warranted a spell of hysteria. 

To Morris Caplan the heavens opened. In a burst of 
brilliance he saw Minnie in a bridal veil tripping by his 
side. So that Ratkin “feller” was not her favorite! His 
heart fairly danced within him. The Alpha Home sit- 
ting-room was too small, too familiar for his new emo- 
tions. 

He proposed a walk. 

“I’ve just come back.” 

“But you wuzent in pleasant company.” 

She smiled and went. It was a mild evening. Morris 
Caplan led her to a bench in Central Park. Minnie was 
silent because of a mind crowded with thought. Morris 
Caplan was silent because of the turbulence of his heart. 
How to say it ! When to say it ! He felt suddenly like 
a silly boy. She was so much younger than he. He was 
accustomed to being a bachelor. Muffled sounds of his 
boarding-house reached his ears — the loneliness and drab- 
ness of it. How much nicer a home and an end of eat- 
ing in restaurants — a child or two. . . . He turned im- 
pulsively and laid his hand on Minnie’s, which was rest- 
ing in her lap. 

“What is it?” Minnie asked. 

Simply as a child, he told her: 

“I love you. I think you have no faults.” What bet- 
ter could he say as a rival of Abraham Ratkin? 

She looked at him smilingly, thinking he was jesting. 
But no, she could tell from his face he was in earnest. 
She tried to withdraw her hand. He held it more firmly. 
A faint anxiety came into his eyes. He was experiencing 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


395 

one of those moments of intense suspense in which a man 
sees his fate swinging in the balance. 

From sheer nervousness Minnie laughed. 

Morris Caplan was annoyed. 

“Don’t laugh!” he said, squeezing her hand. 

She tried to wrench her hand away. She was in a tur- 
moil of alarm, incredulousness, resentment, as though 
Morris Caplan were unjustly imposing something upon 
her. It was a horrid situation. Poor Amelia ! And two 
proposals in one day ! Heavens, everything had to hap- 
pen to her. 

“Let go my hand, Mr. Caplan. Ah, please let go my 
hand.” 

Morris Caplan became determined. When a man feels 
that the step he has taken is too daring, he cannot bear 
to find his opinion corroborated. Minnie was an Ameri- 
can lady, who probably, like the rest, dubbed him “kike.” 
He gripped her hand harder and leaned over. 

“You mane you are in love wid det Ratkin feller?” 

“No, of course not. You are hurting me. What in 
the world is the matter with you? Please let go my 
hand.” 

Minnie’s unfailing friendliness, Morris Caplan now 
felt, had given him the right to feel encouraged. Had her 
friendliness been hypocritical? Had she planned to make 
a fool of him? 

“Oh, here comes somebody. Let go my hand.” 

He relaxed his hold. Minnie jumped up and ran. 

Morris Caplan was stunned. Then he rose and started 
in pursuit, but Minnie was already at the park entrance. 
There was no use trying to overtake her. 

So the girl had made a fool of him! The impudent 
infant! He was furious — like a teased animal. . . . He 


396 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


spat upon the pavement. . . . “She’s a young fool,” he 
thought. “What do I care!” . . . But Minnie’s great, 
gray eyes danced upon his senses, her gay laugh, her 
soft, fetching manner. He sank down on the bench. He 
loved the little girl. What a foolish child ! He had 
money to burn ; he would be so good to her, he would 
carry her about in his arms to save her footsteps. If 
only she had some sense ! What would a Yankee feller 
do for her? Find fault. She had an example in that 
Ratkin feller, who plagued her to make herself over. 
What fools young girls were not to see who would make 
them good husbands. He himself would always feel that 
he had drawn a prize — cherish her — shield her. What- 
ever she did would be golden in his eyes. 

Morris Caplan’s soul stretched out its arms to her 
while Minnie, muttering to herself in astonishment : “He 
really meant it, he really meant it!” and, laughing hys- 
terically, ran faster and faster toward the wings of the 
Alpha Home for Working Girls. 

XLII 

“I wish he asked me. You may bet I’d marry him 
even if he is a kike. You fool, he has money. You’ve 
forgotten already how we used to live when we were 
poor. Money is a mighty good friend.” 

The propounder of this cynical philosophy was Ida. It 
was the night after the two proposals and after Minnie’s 
first day of work at the Settlement. She and Ida and 
Beckie were out walking together. Excited by the new 
work, fagged out by a sleepless night following upon the 
strange happenings of the day before, with her heart 
full to the brim, she had taken the girls into her confi- 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


39 7 


dence. Where else had she to turn ? Miss Liebman was 
busy with her own friends, and it was out of the ques- 
tion to tell Amelia. 

Beckie, conjuring up delightful pictures of a married 
sister living maybe on Riverside Drive, chimed in with 
her advice: 

“I think you ought to grab him. You get used to a 
man.” 

Minnie felt she was in the presence of infinitely wise 
people and silently marvelled at them. That marriage 
was a way out had never occurred to her ; in books and 
in her own imagination marriage was a mating of love. 

“You ought to see mama, how she looks. She looks 
dreadful. All on account of the rotten bands. Bands 
don’t sell now, so she worries herself to a skeleton. But 
if she had married a rich man instead of that habe nichts 
(have nothing) of a Leopold, we would all of us be bet- 
ter off now — she, too.” Ida, though bitterly resentful, 
was genuinely distressed about her mother. Flat hats 
had persisted, and the bands business had continued to 
deteriorate. Ida had experienced her first shock when 
her mother announced that she and Beckie must each 
contribute two dollars a week more from their salaries 
to the home. By their mother’s efforts Ida had been 
taught stenography and Beckie had procured a good po- 
sition as saleslady. It was not until Sarah had been 
drawing heavily from the bank for several months that 
she resorted to this radical step. “Not, God forbid,” 
she solemnly vowed, “that ever in my life I will take 
one cent from them for my own support. But themselves 
it is time they supported.” 

Ida was feeling the sting of poverty. With a weak- 
ness for pretty clothes, eight dollars a week, reduced by 


398 SARAH AND HER DA UGHTER 


five for mere food and shelter, put her in a mood for the 
practical appreciation of a rich “kike.” 

Ida’s description of her mother’s condition went to 
Minnie’s heart. The image of the mother of Henry 
Street, toiling and harassed, blotted out the image of the 
wife of Leopold who had neglected to visit the sick 
daughter at a charity institution. 

“Of course, I don’t say anything about Mr. Maloney,” 
Ida continued. “He’s a gentile. But Morris Caplan is 
a Jew. If you’ve got all your life to teach him in, he’ll 
have time to learn to say 'truth’ instead of ‘throot.’ Such 
men make the best husbands.” 

“But I don’t love him,” Minnie ventured weakly. 

“Nu — and if you don't?” Ida pooh-poohed. 

Ida’s vulgar certainty undermined Minnie’s confidence 
in her own feelings. She made no retort. Was Ida 
right, were love marriages a mere vagary of literature? 
And because Mr. Maloney was a gentile — was that the 
only reason she ought not to consider him? 

The girls’ visit left Minnie more upset than ever. 
She was sorry she had taken them into her confidence. 
All she had achieved was a shaken belief in herself — 
perhaps she was sentimental — and contempt of Ida’s vul- 
gar practicalness. 


XLIII 

The rolling gentlemen’s voices and the warbling 
women’s voices of the Academy Settlement House were 
to Minnie reverberations from a background of awe-in- 
spiring culture. Self-confidence, never a staunch ally of 
hers, now beat a complete retreat. She felt like a com- 
mon house-fly that has strayed into a king’s palace to 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


399 

find that not another insect has had the same audacity. 
She walked about on tiptoe and spoke in whispers, all the 
while despising herself and fighting desperately to over- 
come her timidity and assume a natural manner. There 
were moments when she would shed a tear of homesick- 
ness for the genial Maloney place. 

The third day a young man of breezy western man- 
ner, of a full, resonant voice, and of the unpromising 
name of Grave, appeared upon the scene and dispelled 
the clouds. 

“This is Miss Mendel, is it?” he brawled. 

Minnie, blushing, rose from her seat. 

“Yes,” she said with a puzzled look, and stood shyly 
expectant of an explanation. 

Mr. Grave danced his deep blue eyes over her face 
and laughed pleasantly. 

“Well, now, I’m Mr. Grave, one of the fourteen resi- 
dent club directors of this Arcadia, and I have come to 
you, the guardian angel of the world’s elixir — money — to 
cash a fifty-dollar check.” 

Minnie laughed a modulated giggle, blushed a trifle 
deeper, inclined her head to one side, and replied, her 
gray eyes sparkling: 

“I am here to serve you now and always gladly, fair 
sir.” She looked up at his shock of blond hair and moved 
to the safe in the corner of the office. Mr. Grave’s jolly 
glance followed her. Stooping to open the combination, 
she looked up and their eyes met. They laughed. 

“She’s a bully sort,” went through Mr. Grave’s mind. 

“What a nice man !” went through Minnie’s mind. 

He bowed graciously and thanked her cordially for the 
cash. 

“I know a man,” said Minnie, “who would say ‘danks 


400 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


a toy send times/ ” Mr. Grave’s laugh covered a full 
scale of notes. 

His carriage as he walked out of the office recalled 
someone in the past to Minnie. She spent a few moments 
wondering who it could be. 

The little encounter colored her whole day. Every 
now and then she found herself hoping Mr. Grave would 
come in again and assuring herself he would. The pros- 
pect buoyed her. 

The air as she walked home seemed to have a fresher 
tang. It was well after all, she rejoiced, that she had 
left John Maloney’s place. What was the use of the 
same old thing day after day? New experiences added 
vividness to life. She was glad she had made the change. 
Abraham Ratkin had certainly been wrong when he said 
that she would meet with the same trials at the settlement 
as at the Charities. The settlement, though a philan- 
thropy, was of a different character ; people did not come 
there to cry; they came to amuse themselves, to dance, 
to sit around and to have fun. And it had the advantage 
of a far more cultured environment than the John Ma- 
loney Paper Box Company. All seemed well with the 
world to Minnie. 

Mr. Grave came again the next day for a pencil, the 
day after for a friendly word or two, which kept him 
with Minnie for fully fifteen minutes; then he came in 
for a telephone number, which detained Minnie fully ten 
minutes after closing hour. Out of appreciation he asked 
to be allowed to see her to the street car. 

Walking beside Mr. Grave, talking, laughing with* him 
as if he were a mere man instead of a god, transported 
Minnie to a world of unreality. His voice sounded in 
her ears like exhilarating music ; her own person seemed 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


401 

a dream afloat. By the time he left her she was tingling 
with excitement. 

Thenceforth Mr. Grave paid daily calls. He seemed 
to Minnie the perfect man, of incomparable manners. 
And in spite of his perfection, he looked upon her, ap- 
parently,^ someone from whom he could learn. Often 
he laughed over what she said and called her a bright 
little girl. She was intensely grateful. Praise was novel. 
Morris Caplan’s admiration, because it was evoked by 
the things concerning which she herself felt confident, 
had affected her differently. Her very name pronounced 
at the Settlement — Miss Mendel — sounded fine and dig- 
nified. She became less of a nobody to herself. And as 
her timidity fell away, her efficiency increased. Every- 
body came to Dr. Evangel's secretary with the assurance 
that what was asked of her would be properly attended 
to. Soon she became a person of standing at the Set- 
tlement. 


XLIV 

Minnie was conscious of a joy in living. The days 
with their whirl of interesting activities and the evenings 
with their comparative comfort at the Alpha Home were 
a song; Mr. Grave was the sweet refrain. Life became a 
pleasurable adventure with all sorts of thrilling possibili- 
ties. Something interesting might happen any moment 
— when the door-bell at the Alpha Home sounded, or the 
telephone at the Settlement rang, or a knock came at the 
office door. Minnie was young. She had never been 
young before. 

The happiness she got from roaming among dreams 
and fancies woven from the experiences of the day often 


402 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


drew her out evenings for long walks by herself. Be- 
sides, she now enjoyed the life of the streets. A sense 
of kinship for all these men and women colored their 
doings with a new interest. Some instinct told her they, 
too, had their dreams. Her step was buoyant, her eyes 
eager. 

One evening her attention was drawn by a crowd *on 
a side street just off a main avenue, and she heard a 
man’s voice above the rattle of vehicles, clear, strong, 
vibrant. It came from an orator mounted on an im- 
provised platform with his back against a large banner 
displaying the emblem of the arm and torch. 

“Much is said about the sacredness of life, but we 
stow human beings away in East Side hovels to breed 
disease, to suffer and decay ” 

The orator’s voice sounded like Mr. Grave’s ! 

“Much is said about the sacredness of parenthood, yet 
we send the father to the sweat shop and let him out when 
he is too exhausted to think of anything beside 'his 
wretched cot for rest ” 

Strange that his voice should sound so much like Mr. 
Grave’s ! Minnie recalled that at their first meeting Mr. 
Grave had evoked something reminiscential in her. She 
peered at the speaker but his face was partly in shadow 
and she could not make out his features. 

“Much is said about the divinity of motherhood, yet 
we send mothers to other people’s houses to wash and 
scrub and back to the reeking tenement, wretched and 
aching, to bestow a lick and a promise upon her own 
babies. . . . 

His words, sincere and sympathetic, which seemed so 
to apply to her family’s life, sent a queer little chill down 
Minnie’s spine. And his voice and the lift of his shoul- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


403 

ders were so like Mr. Grave’s! Now he took a step 
backward— his face fell in full light— Gregory Chernin! 
That’s who it was! Their eyes met. He seemed to see 
the excitement in hers and smiled down upon her. His 
smile seemed to ask that she wait until his speech was 
over, to say that he would join her presently. She found 
herself nodding and smiling back, feeling a happy peace. 

“In the mills and the mines we crush our babies whom 
we liken to birds and flowers, crush them before they 
have a chance to open their petals. Then with well-serv- 
ing stupidity we screw up our foreheads in perplexity and 
make a scientific study of why homes are broken up, why 
men desert wives, why there need be children’s peniten- 
tiaries, why there is insanity, theft and murder. We 
avert our eyes from the uncomfortable truth ” 

Had she been able to put her thoughts into words, she 
would have said just that. It seemed incredible to Min- 
nie that there was another human being who thought so 
exactly as she did. She had believed herself to be alone 
in her philosophy, freakish, eccentric. She felt peculiarly 
jubilant. 

“We reduce a man to the level of a dog and then we 
hang him because he does not behave like a man.” 

The audience laughed and clapped. Minnie was suf- 
fused with the pride that one takes in the successes of 
a blood relation. 

Gregory, who seemed to be only the introductory 
speaker, was soon shaking hands heartily with her on the 
sidewalk, and inviting her to come with him to a nearby 
restaurant, as he had not yet supped. She was keenly 
and pleasurably conscious that he was glad to see her. 

At table she allowed herself a full look at her tall, 
manly companion. His face was altered from the col- 


404 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


lege lad’s of her gaming days, and yet it was what Min- 
nie felt she would somehow have expected. It was thin, 
pale, and worn. His brown shock of hair was a little 
thinner. His eyes were Olga’s, large and brown, with 
her love of humanity shining in them and an added touch 
of reflectiveness and also of humor. He looked like one, 
Minnie felt, of whom big things were to be expected. 
But for his cordial smile, she might have felt self-con- 
scious at being in the presence of someone obviously her 
superior in learning and breeding. As it was, she was 
experiencing peace, a happy peace, different from the 
turbulent, agitating happiness of her association with 
Mr. Grave. 

The waiter came for the order. 

“You’ll have something to eat, too,” Gregory urged. 

His courtesy was delicious — like Mr. Grave’s. 

The waiter disappeared with their orders. 

Gregory settled himself in an easy posture, with his 
elbows on the table and his hands clasped, his eyes rest- 
ing on Minnie’s face. He began gravely : 

“You were on my mother’s conscience. But it is quite 
apparent she had no cause to worry.” 

At this blunt reference to a disreputable past, which 
Minnie had flung behind her as Sarah had her poverty, 
she flushed, looked up hastily, on the verge of annoy- 
ance. She met a frank, disarming gaze. Gregory seemed 
wholesomely detached from that past of which he had 
as much cause to be ashamed as she. She felt somehow 
assured that his and not hers was the proper attitude; 
that his was the bigger attitude, the impersonal one. She 
dropped her eyes. 

“How is your mother ?” she asked. 

“She’s dead,” Gregory answered simply. 

“Oh!” Minnie exclaimed, experiencing the horrifying 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


405 

sense of an adult's first contact with death. After a 
pause, she asked: 

“And your father?" 

“He died too — first. Mother died of the same illness." 

Minnie caught the deep feeling beneath the simplicity 
of his utterance. 

“But tell me about yourself," he added. 

She looked up at him with dimmed eyes. His pallor 
and thinness connected itself painfully in her heart with 
his parents. A tender feeling rose in her for Gregory, 
a feeling of closeness to him. 

“I have had lots of experience,” she said, half smiling, 
half weeping, “but you know how it is with experiences ; 
they loom large to those who go through them, but in the 
telling they seem small enough." 

“Tell me anyway," he said, his voice and manner so 
gentle that Minnie felt herself expanding toward him. 

She told him everything, even of her engagement to 
Louis “the paintner." Neither her mind nor her will 
seemed to have anything to do with her frank outpour- 
ing. It was as if the impulse came from Gregory. With 
a little smile she ended : “And now I’m well and happy." 

Gregory stroked his chin and looked into space, then 
turned his eyes on her gently. 

“You have had lots of experiences. They do not 
seem little." He was silent a moment and then added 
warmly : “You have outwitted the evil fate we all feared 
was in store for you." 

Minnie felt with a thrill the commendation implied in 
his words and tone, the recognition that she had strug- 
gled and achieved ; and by contrast the eternally fault- 
finding Abraham came to her mind. Quickly she made 
mental comparison of his dry presentation of Socialism 
with Gregory’s warm-hearted speech. She said : 


406 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“It was something so new to me — your way of pre- 
senting Socialism. I always think that way about life, 
but I have a friend who tells me it is too formless, too” 
— she ruffled her forehead — “too hysterical. He wants 
me to read Value, Price and Profit ” 

Gregory laughed a short, hearty laugh. An exquisite 
joy shot through Minnie’s heart. He laughed exactly 
like Mr. Grave! A fine, thin note of adoration made 
music in her soul. 

“Your friend must be a pedant,” said Gregory. 

Aha! A pedant! That’s what Abraham was. Greg- 
ory had summed him up for her. How well Gregory 
understood everything ! How nice it was to talk to some- 
one who understood! It seemed to make one’s thoughts 
come easier. How nice it would be to have him for a 
friend. Where was he living, what was he doing? 

“I told you,” she said, “all about myself. I think I 
deserve that you tell me about yourself. I suppose” — 
her voice and look were full of sympathy — “that being 
without a home you have had to knock about a whole lot. 
That’s so hard.” 

Gregory gave her a look of appreciation for her com- 
passionate insight. 

His tale was simple. After graduating from college 
he taught for some time, then, finding that he was 
cramped by the conditions imposed upon the public school 
teachers, he gave up the profession to become a propa- 
gandist for the Socialist Party. 

It was time to leave. As Minnie watched Gregory 
settle with the waiter in a smiling way that reminded her 
of Mr. Grave again, she was moved by a girlish ebul- 
lition to discuss with this new-old friend who “under- 
stood” a question that had occupied her and Mr. Grave 
in the afternoon. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


407 


“Do you think,” she began as soon as they were on the 
street, “that happiness comes altogether from within? 
Don’t be surprised,” she smiled, “at my question out of a 
clear sky ; but I started out on a walk this evening espe- 
cially to think about it when your audience attracted me, 
and you’ve captivated my thoughts ever since.” 

Gregory smiled and reflected. 

“Well, happiness, I suppose, does come from within, 
but only if the external possibilities for happiness exist. 
For instance, no amount of the ‘within’ will make a man 
happy if he is forced to keep his toe on a red-hot stove.” 

Minnie laughed delightedly. Here were her own feel- 
ings exactly expressed ; here was her answer to Mr. 
Grave, whose whole life had been smooth sailing and 
who had insisted that happiness is entirely a matter of 
“within.” 

At the door of the Alpha Home Minnie was seized un- 
accountably by a panicky feeling. Would Gregory say he 
would come to see her, or ought she ask him to? 

He held out his hand, and said as if in answer to her 
thoughts : 

“I am afraid I cannot see you soon again. To-morrow 
I leave on a speaking tour of the New England States. 
Fm awfully sorry.” He shook hands with her. 

For a moment she felt terribly forsaken. But Mr. 
G raV e — she would see him in the morning. She felt light- 
hearted again. 

But as she made her way upstairs a vague emptiness 
pervaded her soul, a tearfulness, a low-burning disap- 
pointment. 

XLV 

A modest man retains his modesty until the thing of 
which he deemed himself undeserving is actually denied 


4 o8 SARAH AND, HER DAUGHTER 

him, then he sees no reason under the sun why he should 
not possess it. So it was with Morris Caplan. 

The morning after Minnie’s odd behavior, he awoke, 
metaphorically speaking, with a dark brown taste in his 
mouth. Everything was wrong with the world. He was 
suffering, not from the sweet melancholia that the poets 
would have us believe goes hand in hand with a love dis- 
appointment, but from an irritability that turned every- 
thing around him black. A slip of a girl, a waif in a 
working girl’s home had made a fool of him. He spat 
out shreds of tobacco with unwonted vehemence. 

In the course of the day, however, his mood changed : 
he entered a demurrer against fate. Why should he live 
always in a boarding-house and eat in restaurants ? Why 
should he make money for nobody ? 

When the summons came, Minnie was in her room en- 
gaged in delightful reveries of a sprightly half-hour’s 
confab that day with Mr. Grave. She had been surprised 
to find that he did not remind her so much of Gregory as 
Gregory had, the night before, reminded her of him. 
Even their voices had now a dissimilar ring ; the bantering 
quality was absent from Gregory’s tone. By the end of 
the half-hour Mr. Grave had somehow seemed to rele- 
gate Gregory to a dream-world in Minnie’s mind. Her 
meeting with him sank suddenly into a shadowy past, 
while Mr. Grave remained vividly present, a substantial 
reality of her daily life. 

In the Alpha Home for Working Girls, no such formal 
procedure was observed as the announcing of a visitor’s 
name. Minnie went downstairs wondering who the man 
could be who had asked to see her. Abraham Ratkin, 
possibly. But she was not expecting him until Sunday. 
What could be bringing him so soon again ? She wished 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


409 


he would not come so unceremoniously, as if she had al- 
ways to be at his disposal. 

At sight of Morris Caplan she was greatly disconcerted. 
She flushed, hung her head, and stammered a greeting. 

He, too, had the earmarks of one not precisely at ease. 

They seated themselves. Did Mr. Caplan want to see 
Amelia perhaps? He frowned and answered impatiently 
that she knew very well he did not want to see Amelia. 
How should she know, she demanded, while her mind 
went round in a whirl — had he actually meant that night’s 
proposal, had he actually meant it? In the excitement of 
other things, she had more or less dismissed it from her 
mind, as much as any girl can dismiss a proposal of mar- 
riage from her mind. 

Morris Caplan was determined upon having no non- 
sense this evening; he would not take “no” for an an- 
swer. Moreover, he would not go out where there was 
the whole wide world for her to escape to, but would 
keep her right there in the sitting-room, where in the 
bright light she had to look him straight in the eye and say 
definitely that she would marry him — when — and so on. 

His heart fluttered as his mind strutted. 

“Now, then, Mees Mendel,” he began, “I meant what 
I said last night, and you did a most insulting thing to 
run away from me as if I insulted you.” He went on, 
in what struck Minnie as a disgustingly dictatorial man- 
ner, to tell her it was her duty to give and his privilege 
to have an answer, a direct, truthful answer (Minnie 
noted with a little shiver coursing along her spine that 
he said “throotful” and “answear”), and considering his 
position — a very successful real estate dealer — it would 
behoove a poor girl without a home or a family to think 
seriously about it. 


4io 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Poor Morris Caplan, he only succeeded in disgusting 
Minnie, to whom it was not apparent that he was making 
a desperate effort to keep his courage from oozing away, 
or that his heavy gold watch chain rose and fell with his 
labored heavings, or that the pulse of his neck was throb- 
bing under his too roomy collar. His nerve ! a kike ! even 
Mr. Maloney had spoken more respectfully, more as if 
he were asking something of her than as if he were do- 
ing her a favor. His nasty money! He spoke like an 
onion grater ! Ida would have him — why did he not pro- 
pose to her ? Poor Amelia ! She was in love with him. 
Served Amelia right — for loving such a dub. Such a 
dub! how could anyone love him! Yet he was a good- 
hearted person. And how he used to laugh at her friski- 
ness! Why could it not have continued? Now an end 
of him — an end of lessons. He was taking advantage 
of her. Because she gave him lessons he thought she 
was in love with him. If he touched her she would die. 
Think of kissing him — on the lips, his thick lips — his red 
face, his paunch — almost like the landlord's they used 
to have on Henry Street. Maybe he really owned those 
twin tenements on Henry Street. The blood and the 
flesh of the people there now, went to stuff his belly. 

“Do you own any houses on Henry Street ?” 

This resembled the questions that Morris Caplan’s 
gayer, more precocious young American lady friends 
would ask him preparatory to looking him up in Brad- 
street. A little resentment and disappointment shot like 
pebbles through his heart. 

“Nu, and if I have?” He sat alert. 

She covered her face with her hands, seeing his en- 
trails actually stuffed with the marrow of other people. 
She groaned. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER • 


41 1 

Morris Caplan was startled. He leaned forward to 
take her hands away from her eyes. She edged away 
and dropped her hands, and an expression of indisputable 
resolution came into her face and voice as she said : 

“Mr. Caplan, I do not want to marry you. I never 
will. Please leave me alone. I never want to hear you 
ask me again.” He made a swift move in his chair as 
if to contradict her, but she added more emphatically: 
“Now, I never want to see you again if you don’t throw 
that rubbish out of your head. I won’t marry you. 
There now !” The last, feeling herself overcome by im- 
potence, she flung out as though to spite him, like a 
child. 

Morris Caplan flushed. He was angry with her. At 
the same time he was angry with himself for wanting 
her when she refused him so emphatically. As though 
charging her with not having carried through a business 
deal fairly, he told her he had no intention of being cut 
off from further chances of winning her. He was go- 
ing to see her again, and again; he would make her 
marry him. It was his policy never to take “no” for an 
answer. 

Minnie rose, telling him, in her turn, that she supposed 
she had something to say in the matter, too, and choking 
with impotence, strutted out of the room. 

And Morris Caplan was left with a quarrel on his 
hands, a void in his heart, and a consciousness of the 
asinity of his behavior. Nevertheless he resented this 
slip of a girl in a working girls’ home. What in the 
world did he want her for, as if there were not dozens of 
other girls prettier, from nice homes, who would be 
mighty glad to have him. Indeed, he would not come to 
see her again. She could go to But how could he 


412 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

send her there when he wanted — wanted her so badly in 
his arms ? 

* * * * * * 

In the flush of her indignation Minnie went straight 
to Amelia’s room and emptied her whole heart into the 
other’s lap, having had it on her mind, in any event, that 
Amelia ought to know where Morris Caplan’s affections 
had strayed. She told Amelia everything, ending with: 
“Now you mustn’t blame me, Amelia, it’s not my fault 
if he is crazy enough to care for me. I always tried to 
throw you two together. It makes me sick how every- 
thing always comes out upsidedown — and I hate him any- 
way. He had no right to propose to me.” 

Had it not been for Minnie’s very attitude of defen- 
sive, Amelia’s suspicions might not have been aroused. 
Watching Minnie closely, she became convinced that Min- 
nie was masking the truth. Why should Minnie be so 
indignant about the proposal ? Why, indeed, but to throw 
her, Amelia, off the track, so that later, she, Minnie, 
could say that she had not wanted to accept Morris — 
did not Amelia remember? — but that he had insisted. . . . 
Amelia sighed sarcastically, donned her wisest expression, 
shrugged her shoulders, and with assumed nonchalance, 
though her heart beat a tattoo, told Minnie she need not 
go to all the trouble of masquerading. For her part, she 
knew how to get along without things ; she had had to 
get along without enough in her life, and her character 
was not so weak that she did not know how, like a good 
sport, to hand a man over to a friend. 

No expression can be given to the multitude of emo- 
tions that swept into poor Minnie’s heart and soul as the 
wise, large-minded Amelia delivered her small sermon. 
She felt herself being dragged through purgatory, taking 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


413 


on herself the odor of decomposition, growing sick, faint. 

When she reached her own room she fell on her bed in 
a heap. Amelia’s words and Morris Caplan’s words 
hummed and buzzed in her head. She felt like a stranger 
to herself. A sickening aversion for the Alpha Home 
came upon her, as if sewage had suddenly been exposed 
in it. She turned from one side to the other in poisoned 
restlessness. Her fingertips began to sting and her head 
to ache. 

The following morning she was too ill to go to work 
and had to keep her bed. 


XLVI 

On Sunday, in accordance with his promise and plans, 
Abraham Ratkin came to call on Minnie. He was 
shocked to see how pale and worn she looked. All his 
paternal self was roused to protectiveness. That work — 
that work in the charity place! Hadn’t he told her it 
would have an ill effect, first upon her body, then, as a 
result, upon her nerves and her spirits ? She would soon 
be taking people to task again and having to-dos. Why, 
why, couldn’t she be amenable to sane advice ? 

To prove that his prediction of troubles ahead was 
false, Minnie blurted out the tale of the week’s excite- 
ments, concluding with her usual “There now!” They 
had the sitting-room to themselves, and they could talk 
freely. 

Abraham felt himself jerked into an undreamed-of, 
startling reality, in which, for self-protection, his soul 
drew closer to the decision that it was time for him to 
tell Minnie of his love and ask her to become engaged to 
him. He would promise, he rehearsed mentally, that dur- 


414 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


ing their engagement he would devote himself to her as 
her counsellor, guide, and good close friend — and then 
they would marry. 

“You see, Minnie, I told you long ago you ought to 
drop Mr. Caplan’s lessons. You should have taken my 
advice.” Abraham spoke, not in his old scolding way, 
but in a tender tone of loving admonition. 

“Yes, but not because of that. You only thought I 
would have more time to read.” 

Abraham blinked. 

“That, too,” he said, “but I could not take the liberty 
of telling you so plainly.” 

They lapsed into meditation. 

“I wonder when we’ll be married,” Abraham mused. 

It sounded like a clock suddenly beginning to tick — 
the one-legged clock on the shelf over the sink in Henry 
Street. “When you be a teacher,” Minnie heard herself 
piping. She saw the rock, the refuse of the air-shaft, as 
in a vivid dream. 

“I love you, Minnie. Isn’t it odd that we should be 
sweethearts after that long separation?” 

Sweethearts! She became conscious of Abraham’s 
hands lying spread out on his knees, stubby, with short, 
blunt fingers. He turned his head at the sound of a 
step, and for the first time, she observed dark hairs like 
bristles in the lobes of his ear. Sweethearts ! They ! 
It struck her as ludicrous and repellent. She remem- 
bered the button in the back of his coat, and experienced 
an uncanny sensation, as of dampness in the room. . . . 
He in love with her! She was not in love with him! 
The large blond and dark heads of Mr. Grave and Greg- 
ory Chernin danced as one before her eyes, their reso- 
nant voices rang in her ears. She saw the humorous 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


415 


gleam of their eyes. Abraham Ratkin’s cold calculative- 
ness as compared with Gregory’s human warmth whipped 
upon her heart like a cold wet cloth. 

“We cannot be married right away,” she heard Abra- 
ham saying. “I will prepare myself to take the principals' 
examination a few years from now. We might have to 
stay engaged five years. You are young. Twenty-five is 
just the right age for a girl to be married. And really, 

Minnie ” he stumbled and added, “dear — you ought 

to live at home — like a nice, sweet, sensible girl. We will 
be engaged, and you will find it pleasanter than you used 
to to be at home, because they always respect an engaged 
daughter in a Jewish household. We will spend a lot of 
time together. You will work, and without other dis- 
tractions you will really concentrate your mind upon the 
proper reading. Come, like a nice girl.” 

Abraham Ratkin’s arithmetic of life had never left a 
margin for complications. To him life was a sort of 
Quaker Matron wearing a neat white cap and apron and 
smiling beneficent acquiescence upon all his plans. 
Never, in all his neat mapping out of things, had he al- 
lowed for the possible need of removing a single hair 
from this Quaker Matron’s eye to make her see that 
what he wanted he wanted justifiably, out of pure, good 
reason. 

He leaned forward in his chair, expectant. 

A gasp came from Minnie to put his soul in a panic. 

“Why, Abraham — I — never — I did not think of mar- 
rying you ” 

Abraham was taken aback. He flushed and waited be- 
fore he spoke again. 

“Well, of course, you have not said it to yourself. It 
doesn’t matter. A fact is a fact.” 


416 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


What in the world did he mean, she wondered. What 
in the world did all of them mean? Were they all 
crazy? Abraham — Morris Caplan — Mr. Maloney? 

“I don’t want to marry you !” she said in a raised voice. 

Abraham’s heart made a leap and landed upside down, 
causing the world to assume the queerest aspect. 

Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, Abra- 
ham Ratkin was not conceited. He was simply not lack- 
ing in the normal amount of self-confidence. The aver- 
age man quite naturally expects that the average woman 
will find him desirable for marriage. As John Maloney 
so aptly put it, men are not to be found in five-and-ten- 
cent stores ; a fact with which girls of experience are ac- 
quainted. And when a young man and a young woman 
can, moreover, look back upon a childhood affection as a 
foundation, could a man possibly be more justified in 
feeling secure? Abraham’s heart pounded ridiculously, 
and there seemed to be unsafe things lurking in the cor- 
ners of the room. He was overcome with alarm. Bend- 
ing forward, he said feverishly : 

“I — I love you. Surely you love me, too. I can’t live 
without you. Without you ” 

“You will have no one to bully,” Minnie interjected. 
Her feelings were at last crystallizing into definite ob- 
jection. She saw before her the mathematical Abraham, 
the calculating Abraham, the Abraham who was forever 
right, who never had a gratifying thing to say to her, who 
had figured out a five-year engagement between them in 
order to make her his perfect counterpart, like the porce- 
lain shepherdess that so perfectly matches the porcelain 
shepherd at the other end of the mantel. Rising, she said 
in a low voice with concentrated feeling: 

“You all make me weary.” Abraham made a move to 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


4i 7 


grasp her hand. Feeling she would break down if she 
stayed in the room, yet hating herself for her weakness, 
she jumped up and left. 

Abraham’s astonishment knew no bounds. But soon 
he settled down to await her return. He even felt a bit 
amused at her childishness. At the end of an hour, dur- 
ing which she failed to come back, he left, patching up 
his spirits with the thought that she was a little stubborn 
and with the conviction that she would write. 

Days passed, yet no letter came and he was just ap- 
proaching the borderline of fear, when the mail brought 
a missive in her handwriting. 


Dear Abraham : 

I have left the Alpha Home. 


Minnie. 


The Alpha Home had become unbearable to Minnie, 
and, while Abraham’s thoughts had been dwelling with 
her lovingly, she had been meditating escape from every- 
thing associated in her mind with the Home. The long- 
ing to get away became an obsession, to which she finally 
yielded, and she engaged a room at the Young Ladies’ 
Lodge, a sort of working-girls’ hotel, which aspired to 
eliminate the characteristics of a philanthropy. 


XLVII 

‘There is no such thing as a universal convention.” 

Mr. Grave, with a bit of leisure on his hands, was 
keeping Minnie from her work. Minnie looked as if she 
did not agree with him. She felt sure there must be one 
thing in the world to which all people did adhere. But 


418 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


her geographical experience being as limited as it was, 
she did not dare pit her opinion against that of her 
august friend. 

Whenever Mr. Grave came into the office to spend 
time with her, Minnie’s heart would go pit-a-pat, and, dis- 
tracted by the fear that he might detect her agitation, she 
always had to make the double effort of controlling her- 
self and concentrating lier mind upon the way to meet 
him in conversation. 

“Isn’t there?” she asked. 

“No, of course not; can you think of any?” 

Mr. Grave was trying to convince her that there was 
really no right and no wrong, since what was right in one 
part of the globe was wrong in another; and the same, 
therefore, held true of individuals. For a beggar it might 
be right to steal, while for her it might be wrong. 

As he seemed to have won the day, she backed water 
into raillery. It was when making fun that they enjoyed 
each other the most. 

“Well, I should think stupidity at least was a universal 
convention. For instance, here you sit stupidly forget- 
ting that I am the paid secretary of the Settlement with 
work to do.” 

Mr. Grave laughed, then fell into the mood of his own 
name. She was undertaking too much work, he told her ; 
the former secretary had not worked so hard, and it was 
unwise to be at it morning, noon, and night. 

At the Young Ladies’ Lodge time hung heavy on 
Minnie’s hands. She felt lost there. From the Alpha 
Home she had carried away a strong dislike for making 
new friends among girls. But at the Settlement, after 
she had shed her extreme diffidence, she found people 
drifting to her, and she responded gratefully to the af- 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


419 


fection that they manifested. She enjoyed her contacts 
there; so much so, indeed, that almost every evening, 
after having supped at the Young Ladies’ Lodge, she re- 
turned to the Settlement, where there was recreation, in- 
teresting work, and Mr. Grave, who wafted in and out, 
like a pleasant breeze. There she would keep herself 
from brooding about Amelia’s tirade, and the, to her, un- 
canny conduct of Morris Caplan, Abraham Ratkin, and 
John Maloney, which, when she was alone and unoccu- 
pied, always beset her. She could not keep herself from 
brooding when alone. 

At Mr. Grave’s advice not to overwork, Minnie 
dropped her eyes. When he expressed such genuine 
concern for her, a facetious retort seemed unfair, and 
yet she could not bring herself to explain to him why 
she clung to the Settlement. Her eyes grew moist. Un- 
guardedly she looked up at him. 

“Well, now,” he rolled out, rising from his seat, “we 
seem to have the blues.” He waited a moment and 
added : “How about theater to-night ?” 

To theater with Mr. Grave! Minnie thrilled. 

“Why, that would be perfectly delightful,” she said, 
successfully hiding her excitement. 

After Mr. Grave was gone from the office she unac- 
countably dissolved in tears. She could not make her- 
self out. At the least provocation now she cried like a 
sentimental old lady. 

* * * * * * 

Romance! It was a drama of love that set the young 
a-yearning and kindled sweet memories of long ago in 
the old. The novelty of an orchestra seat, to be sitting 
beside the godlike Mr. Grave wrought a spell upon Min- 
nie. There was a glamour over everyone and everything. 


420 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Once or twice Mr. Grave’s eyes left the stage to rest 
upon her profile. Observing her expression of almost 
devout rapture, he was glad he had been the instrument 
for giving her so much pleasure, and, as though to let her 
know he was thinking of her, he leaned sidewise so that 
his shoulder touched hers. A feeling of ecstacy, sharp 
as a flash of lightning and as brief, shot through Min- 
nie’s being. Instinctively she moved away a bit, but he 
inclined a little further, and for the rest of the act they 
sat with shoulders touching. 

When the curtain dropped, Minnie, trying to feel that 
there was no reason for self-consciousness, looked up at 
him and, with an attempt at naturalness, smiled. 

“Well, little girl, did you like it?” he rolled out, smil- 
ing down on her cordially. Minnie flushed and drew in 
her chin timidly. 

“Oh, yes, it was perfectly lovely.” Then, forgetting 
herself in a gust of enthusiasm, she asked : “Don’t you 
think she’s just charming? And he — oh, he makes me 
think so much of a friend of mine, Gregory Chernin.” 
The actor was dark and tall and slender. “I used to 
know Gregory when I was a little girl. I met him again 
the other night. His voice was just like yours.” She 
broke off, self-conscious again. 

Mr. Grave was amused by her zest and her childish 
outburst and enjoyed the sparkle of her eyes. When the 
curtain went up, he leaned sidewise again. His warm 
breath grazed her cheek. 

“You are as pretty as a flower, and your blue dress 
makes a lovely vase for you.” His deep tone vibrated 
through Minnie like organ notes. She flushed. Her 
heart fluttered. The blood pulsed warm through her 
veins. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


421 


There was a new rhythm to the passionate words of 
love breathed by the ardent, dark-haired lover of the 
play. 

Mr. Grave took Minnie’s hand in his. A faintness 
came over her and a sensation as if the stage had moved 
miles away ; the voices reached her as through a heavy 
forest in which millions of birds were twittering. She 
made no attempt to withdraw her hand. 

Throughout the rest of the act and on the way home 
neither felt the desire for words. 

Outside the door of the Young Ladies’ Lodge Mr. 
Grave looked down on Minnie as if to probe her soul. 

“May I come to see you next Sunday ?” he asked. 

She hesitated, afraid to trust herself to speech. “Yes,” 
she finally brought out in a low voice, “I should be very 
glad if you would come.” 

He was very courteous — perhaps over-courteous — 
when he bade her good-night. 

She dragged up the stairs unsteadily, like one recu- 
perating from an illness. Keeping her room dark, she 
drew off her clothes slowly. Her mind would not move 
to a single definite thought. She got into bed. One by 
one, as fleecy clouds traverse the heavens, thoughts of 
the evening drifted through her mind, and new, warm 
sensations wrapped her soul, which was at once mournful 
and ecstatic. She wanted to cry; she wanted to laugh. 
She buried her face in her arm. Her hair fell in a chest- 
nut mass over her back. The touch of it thrilled her 
through and through. She stretched her arms forward, 
and as if ashamed of the wish that came to her mind 
she brought them quickly back and clasped them beneath 
her chin. 

“Goodness! I love him!” she cried and gave herself 


4 22 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


up to a flow of tears, while her whole being throbbed 
with a new, strange gladness. 

XLVIII 

Abraham was at first shocked by Minnie’s note, then 
upon re-reading it, concluded it was not to be taken seri- 
ously. He was sure she had written it in one of her 
unaccountable moods, under the spell of the same per- 
verseness that had taken her from the sitting-room the 
day of the proposal. Abraham was not of the sort who is 
easily thwarted in his ambitions, and since he had de- 
cided to marry Minnie the insecurity he had experienced 
was rapidly discarded. He braced himself and went 
about his duties calmly confident that another letter 
would soon come. But when two weeks passed and his 
intuitions were promising to play him false he lost some 
of his self-assurance and composure. He began to won- 
der what he ought to do, whether he ought to wait longer 
or get Minnie’s address from Amelia Rubin or the Alpha 
Home itself. He let another week pass in the hope of a 
letter ; then he became quite troubled. He worked up 
great annoyance with Minnie. “J ust like a senseless 
child, she makes it necessary for me to track her,” he 
said to himself disgustedly. Yet on Sunday afternoon he 
started off for the Alpha Home. He would go straight 
to the superintendent, he decided, though recalling with 
mortification that she knew him to be a close friend of 
Minnie’s. He could have spanked Minnie. 

At the superintendent’s office, receiving no response to 
his rap on the door, he opened it and found a large man 
seated in a temporary attitude on the edge of a chair. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


423 

“Oh, is nobody here?” Abraham exclaimed, entering 
and letting the door fall shut. 

A moment’s hesitation and a merry twinkle came into 
the eyes of the Irishman. 

“One feels pretty much like a nobody here.” His 
twinkling eyes glanced about the room, and his nose 
worked like an animal’s on a scent. According to John 
Maloney’s standard, the Alpha Home smelt cheap. 

Abraham smiled. 

“I meant an official.” 

“Oh, ye saw me, did ye ?” Mr. Maloney almost roared. 
“Well, the official went to fetch me an address.” 

The door opened, and the superintendent entered. 

“It is Mildred Mendel, Young Ladies’ Lodge,” she read 
from a slip of paper to Mr. Maloney, who rose from his 
chair and stood deferentially smiling. 

Abraham stared. 

Mr. Maloney picked up his hat from his chair, thanked 
the superintendent graciously, and waddled out. The 
eyes of the woman followed him with amusement. She 
turned to Abraham. 

“I came for the same,” he admitted, feeling so monu- 
mentally foolish that he could have shaken Minnie had 
she been on the spot. 

The genial superintendent laughed. Abraham, blush- 
ing, mumbled his thanks, and left in pursuit of Mr. Ma- 
loney. The paper-box manufacturer must not get there 
ahead of him. What claims had the Irishman on Min- 
nie anyway? He made a wild dash and overtook Mr. 
Maloney at the next comer. 

“Are you Mr. Maloney ?” 

“Why, yes,” came the reply a little dubiously in the 
Irishman’s deep, generous voice. 


424 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Abraham explained that he was an old friend of Min- 
nie’s, and had been alarmed because he had not heard 
from her for three weeks. 

They traveled together on their amorous mission, con- 
versing pleasantly, though each in a subterranean region 
of his being wished the other in Kingdom Come. 

To judge by the exterior, the Young Ladies’ Lodge was 
a hotel, while the plainness of the interior offered con- 
tradiction. The two men were puzzled as to the correct 
procedure for locating a dweller in this unclassifiable in- 
stitution. Finally Mr. Maloney led the way to a counter, 
behind which sat a girl clerk. While she was gone to an- 
nounce the callers, Mr. Maloney gazed about the prem- 
ises, and his far-sighted eyes peered into a remote cor- 
ner of the sitting-room and alighted upon his former 
stenographer sitting beside a handsome gentleman. 

“By golly !” 

Mr. Maloney’s exclamation startled his companion 
competitor, whose gaze, as if drawn by a magnet, traveled 
to the same remote corner. Simultaneously the two made 
for the corner of Great Allure, Mr. Maloney calling back 
to the surprised clerk : 

“Never mind. Don’t ye bother.” 

Minnie did not see the two men until they were close 
by, and then was too dum founded to give them a proper 
greeting, much less to introduce them to Mr. Grave, who 
had risen with her and stood nonplussed and amused by 
the sudden manifestations of extreme embarrassment in 
the heroine of the occasion. She was flushing scarlet to 
the roots of her hair. 

“Why — Mr. Ma Why, Abraham — how did you 

find ” She put her hand to the back of her head, 

which had begun to ache. 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


425 

Mr. Maloney enjoyed her confusion and let out his 
roar. 

At last she got over with the introductions. In an 
agony that Mr. Grave might consider her clumsy, ill- 
mannered, ill-bred, she asked them all to be seated. 

As for Abraham Ratkin, never in his life had he un- 
dergone such a shrinkage of his importance. One of 
three ! Minnie seemed to be skating away from him on 
ice while he was unequipped to pursue. Mrs. Ratkin’s 
gentle son was ready to blast his two rival suitors. How- 
ever, giving no evidence of his will to murder, he asked 
Minnie quite quietly whether she knew how much worry 
she had caused him by her silence. 

Minnie was so nervous and uncomfortable, wondering 
how Mr. Grave was affected by the intrusion, whether 
he noticed that Abraham spoke with a Yiddish intona- 
tion, while Mr. Maloney said “a” instead of “of” and 
“ye” instead of “you,” that she feared she would break 
down under the ordeal. At Abraham’s words, she started 
nervously. 

“I didn’t think about it,” she answered hastily, looking 
away. 

She realized she had to make a desperate effort to pull 
herself together. Like a person in imminent danger, she 
gauged her plight and sought the nearest refuge — persi- 
flage. Turning to Mr. Maloney, she askecf, with the 
friskiness he loved, whether he had changed his religion 
since she had seen him last or whether he was still hob- 
nobbing with the Pope. She knew Mr. Maloney was an 
atheist and would not take offiense. 

As it happened, Mr. Maloney had that morning, for 
the sake of a novel experience, visited a Christian Science 
Church. “It may do ye good to learn,” he said, “that in 
the eyes of the Christian Scientists, I am God’s perfect 


426 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

child. Did ye ever know that I am perfect ?” he roared. 

“No,” Minnie laughed, “but why did you have to go to 
others to tell you so when you could have told it to your- 
self so much more sincerely ?” 

The men laughed, and Minnie was about to ask Mr. 
Maloney what other convenient dogmas he had carried 
away, when Mr. Grave sent a chill through her by ask- 
ing if either of the two gentlemen had seen Romance. It 
was as if he were giving his and her dearest secret 
away. 

“Why do you want to know?” She interrupted, ad- 
dressing Mr. Grave. “Mr. Maloney’s heart is wrapped 
up in paper boxes through which romance can’t possibly 
penetrate, and Mr. Ratkin employs a whole police force 
of logic and reason to safeguard him.” They laughed 
again and the two accused felt like both shaking and 
hugging her. 

The afternoon wore on slowly for Minnie. Her head 
ached beyond endurance, and when the three men ob- 
serving her fatigue offered, one promptly after the other 
to leave, her relief was immense. Each was disappointed 
with her ready acquiescence. 

On his homeward way Mr. Maloney went off into a 
cigar-smoke revery, in which he saw Minnie in his fine 
home sitting on his knee prattling, laughing, cutting up 
stunts. The picture faded into the tantalizing realization 
that she was a young girl, with young “fellers” dangling 
after her. He felt his middle age more than ever and 
cursed his superfluous avoirdupois. He decided he might 
as well step out of the game. 

Abraham went home irritated with this nonsense of 
Minnie’s holding off, and he resolved upon another and 
immediate visit when he would make a quick end of 
matters. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


427 


As for Mr. Grave, he fell to thinking of a tennis-play- 
ing, horseback-riding Gibson girl in the West to whom 
he was engaged. 

XLIX 

The bands business was coming to nothing. 

Leopold and Sarah could no longer close their eyes to 
the disaster staring them in the face. Mrs. Tannenbaum 
had reached the end of her imagination for advice. The 
Mira Cohen woman, she said, had given up bands long 
before and was making money in other kinds of milli- 
nery; but, then, of course, Mira Cohen had relatives in 
Boston. 

They considered projects for a new business, but the 
hardships connected with such a move at their time of 
life seemed insurmountable, and they deluded themselves 
into momentary cheerfulness with the hope that hat styles 
might, after all, change and bands become fashionable 
again. For Sarah their consultations always ended in 
helpless despair, while Leopold regularly reverted in his 
mind to a scheme which he hesitated to impart to Sarah. 

At the end of a week in which not a single dollar had 
been taken in, he plucked up courage and spoke. 

“Sarah, ” he said, “the girls are grown-up and self- 
supporting. How would it be for us to make a change 
altogether ?” 

“A change altogether? How? What do you mean?” 

Leopold ran his fingers through his graying hair. 
Sarah’s eyes followed the movement, and a pang shot 
through her. Not so long ago she and Leopold had been 
young lovers ; now she, too, was gray. Life was a chain 
of gray circumstances. 

“I have been thinking for a long time that we could 


428 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

just drop everything here and go to South Africa. It’s 
easier to start something new in a new place than in an 
old place.” 

Sarah was somehow not surprised, as if she had ex- 
pected this very suggestion. She was in that state of de- 
jection in which nothing startles. In an instant she took 
in the full significance of the suggestion. She lowered 
her head and made no reply. Her heart filled with a 
blank mournfulness at the prospect of going to new sur- 
roundings, away from everything and everybody familiar. 
In her weary brain there rose a vision of her Jacob grown 
to large manhood, and Ida and Beckie to womanhood. 
To leave them behind! She saw Minnie as she had 
looked the night of the graduation. . . . Sarah’s mother 
heart was torn with anguish. 

Leopold continued rather ruefully : 

“We are growing older. A new business here might 
not be successful, we might lose our money. Then 
what?” He raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t know how 
you feel about it, but I would not like to become de- 
pendent upon the children.” 

Dependent! Sarah was startled out of her mood. 
She would rather die, she cried, than be dependent upon 
anybody, whether childern, mother, brother, father, even 
husband. In an access of vigor she rose from her seat 
and went about small tasks. 

Neither spoke for a long while. Leopold broke the 
silence to say he had to go out, and urged her gently to 
consider the South African proposition seriously. 

“But it will cost a great deal to get there. What if we 
should not be successful?” 

Leopold assured her there was no reason why they 
should not be successful, since a small investment in any 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


429 


business in South Africa would yield them a living, and 
all they needed for their few remaining years was simply 
a living, respectable independence. 

They smiled wistfully, and Sarah, before he went out, 
promised to think it over. She went about her tasks 
slowly and preoccupied. For a long time past, life, for 
all its other stress, had at least been free from economic 
worry, and she wondered wherein she and Leopold had 
so sinned that the very business they had chosen should 
decline. Here her mind rested as if to absorb the fact 
that things were really as bad as they thought. It seemed 
impossible that their circumstances had come to a pass 
that necessitated their contemplating so drastic a step 
as migration to a remote corner of the earth, away from 
everything and everybody they knew. A harrowing sense 
of loneliness and despair overcame her, and in an effort 
to save herself she clutched at the thought that other 
mothers did allow themselves to be supported by their 
children quite naturally. But this she could not contem- 
plate. “Not for me, not for me !” she cried to herself 
and hurried on with her work. 

L 

Abraham came again to call on Minnie the Wednesday 
after the visit of the three. Without any preliminaries 
he launched upon the subject of his proposal, and in al- 
most a single breath begged her to discard trifling, to 
think and speak soberly, and to bear in mind the serious- 
ness of the matter. 

“But Abraham, I have told you how I feel,” she pro- 
tested. 

“You have not even given the matter consideration. 


430 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

How then can I accept anything you say as your de- 
cision ?” 

“But I don’t love you. People don’t have to think 
whether they are in love or not.” Minnie felt a hysteri- 
cal determination to have the matter over with, and not 
to allow his apparent reasonableness to reduce her, as it 
always had, to impotence. 

Abraham flushed and stared at her. He had a sinking 
sensation. He felt adrift as though landmarks had sud- 
denly been removed. His unnatural flush was succeeded 
by a still more unnatural pallor. Minnie was genuinely 
pained. 

“Abraham,* I’m awfully sorry. I really am. I wouldn’t 
hurt you or anybody for the world. But what can I do ? 
I don’t love you.” The tears were in her eyes and voice. 
Abraham felt himself suspended in mid-air. There are 
some people who are never prepared for a disturbance of 
their serenity. They live in a peculiar security of belief 
that while evil may befall others, they themselves will 
always be immune. 

Abraham, unable to look the future now threatening 
in the face, abandoned himself to passionate pleading. 

“Minnie dear, you don’t mean you have seriously de- 
cided not to marry me? Take time to think. I will be 
good to you. I would sacrifice my life for you. You 
are alone and need someone to be devoted to you. What 
would I not do for you ! You are dearer to me than my 
own life.” He took her hand in his. 

Pity and then aversion swept over Minnie, like a wind 
that leaves behind a trail of dust. 

“Abraham, please Oh, Abraham, I can’t. I don’t 

feel well. Please don’t excite me.” 

She began to cry. Abraham, agonized, released her 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


43i 

hands, but still continued to plead, leaning eagerly for- 
ward in his chair. 

“Won’t you take time to think about it?’* he asked, his 
voice quivering. 

Minnie wiped her eyes. 

“Abraham, I haven’t been feeling well. I get such 
headaches and palpitations. Please don’t upset me so. I 
am sorry for you but I am not happy myself either. I 
can’t bear to make you so miserable.” 

He sat helpless for a moment ; then, becoming mindful 
of the virtue of self-forgetfulness in the face of distress, 
he urged her to calm herself, assuring her he had not 
meant to upset her so and impressing upon her that if she 
was not well, she ought to go to a doctor. He soon rose 
to go. 

When the front door closed on Abraham, Minnie stood 
in the hall utterly numb, in a state of mental collapse. 
A ruthless hand was drawing and twisting her vitals. 
She could not have told how she got upstairs and into 
bed. And bed was no relief, nor was it a relief to close 
her burning lids. The thoughts came crowding; every 
detail of the evening was a separate torment, every word 
of Abraham’s pleading, her own answers, her tears. She 
had cried again. She was thoroughly mortified ; she had 
no patience with this new thing — her facile overflows. 
The whole scene had been obnoxious, Abraham’s part in 
it, her own part in it. Somehow it should not have oc- 
curred. And Mr. Maloney’s proposal and Morris Cap- 
lan’s two proposals should not have occurred. Each de- 
tail of these events became a separate torment. She felt 
as if it would never be possible for her to stop her 
thoughts, as if she had to submit to them as to a hard 
master. And she was so tired, so dreadfully, so unnat- 
urally, so unmercifully tired! . . . “You ought to go to 


43 2 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


a doctor,” sounded Abraham’s voice. Abraham was so 
earnest, so whole-souled, so trustworthy, good as gold — 
her pal of Henry Street. He needed her to make him 
happy. She felt mean and worthless to inflict suffering 
upon him instead. A deep longing for the power to love 
him — to make him happy — possessed her. But she re- 
mained cold. . . . With sudden passion, feeling hope- 
lessly abandoned, lonely, she cried to herself : “Oh, if 

only I had someone to tell it all to — someone A 

hard-hearted mother standing over an over-worked little 
Beckie flitted before her closed eyes. 

The rising bell clanged upon a deep sleep which had 
not come until morning. Minnie dressed with a heart 
palpitating from the shock of the awakening; the comb 
fell from her hands ; she fumbled with her shoe laces ; 
dressing seemed to be an endless, insurmountable diffi- 
culty. She left the breakfast table for work without a 
mouthful of food ; she could not swallow even a cup of 
coffee. 


* * * * * * 

For days Abraham was the most wretched lover that 
has ever found himself spurned. He hated the food he 
ate, his daily routine, the voice and the sight of his 
mother, whose design it had been to bring this very mis- 
ery upon him. 

Each succeeding visit to Minnie only drove a new nail 
into the coffin of his hopes. She remained unshaken. 
The fact that Minnie Mendel, his playmate of Henry 
Street, was unwilling to be his wife, finally struck him 
as unalterable, and a pall of gloom settled upon his heart. 
His step became heavy as a middle-aged man’s ; his spir- 
its crumpled up like a dried plant. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


433 


To add to his unhappiness he began to suffer the pangs 
of jealousy. Minnie, it had become evident to him, was 
in love with Mr. Grave. On his regular Sunday visits he 
invariably met the delightful gentleman in her company. 
When Abraham would observe her flush and quiver 
under Mr. Grave’s gaze or touch or praise, it took every 
bit of his sel^-control not to evince the concern he felt 
on her account — yes, he assured himself, wholly on her 
account. Very obviously Mr. Grave was not in love with 
Minnie, and in any circumstances the affair was objec- 
tionable because Mr. Grave was a Gentile. Abraham was 
very Jewish in his feelings. He believed so much in the 
individuality of his people that he gave his support to 
the Zionist movement, which has for its program the re- 
establishment of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. The 
time came when he could no longer maintain silence. He 
warned Minnie. To fall in love, he said, with a man to 
whom she was so obviously only a pastime was quixotic. 

Minnie turned pale, bit her lips, suppressed the resent- 
ment that rose in her heart, and told him with dignity 
that it was her own private affair, and he was taking a 
liberty in giving her unsolicited advice. 

Abraham’s warning, however, had its effect upon Min- 
nie. Thereafter she carefully weighed Mr. Grave’s at- 
tentions, placing her own feelings in the balance. Each 
time he left the office with the least show of haste, her 
heart stood still in an agony of doubt. If he loved her, 
she reasoned, he would never for any reason be in a hurry 
to leave her. She would watch for his smile of approval 
as a mother watches for the smile of an ailing child, and 
if a Sunday passed on which he did not come to see her, 
the whole world was wrapped in gloom. When they were 
alone together, she would tremble with the anticipation of 
his love avowal, tortured all the while by the sound of 


434 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Abraham’s voice telling her. mockingly that she was only 
a pastime. 

She began to look pale and pinched and to act so mirth- 
lessly that Abraham, whose kind heart was torn to its 
core, took his courage in his hands once more, and, pre- 
pared for any sacrifice of Minnie’s good-will, warned her 
a second time, on this occasion going the full length of 
explicitness. It was obvious, he said, that Mr. Grave 
enjoyed her company, but so far as marriage was con- 
cerned, his mind was as remote from it as from the 
Pacific Ocean. 

Minnie turned upon him like a tigress. 

“You take the liberties of a relative,” she burst out. 
“If you had the least delicacy of feeling, you would keep 
quiet. I hate you. Please don’t ever come to see me 
again.” They were out walking and she quit him then 
and there to rush back to the Young Ladies’ Lodge, where 
she threw herself on her bed, her soul writhing in an 
agony of doubt. Every little thing Mr. Grave had ever 
done to indicate liking rather than love rose to torture 
her. 

As for poor Abraham, he returned home an even sad- 
der man. The night held no sleep for him, and in the 
morning he poured out his full heart on paper. When 
he posted the letter to Minnie, a hope like a fervent 
prayer rose within him that his written word at least 
might reach her soul. 

Dearest Minnie: 

The psychological steps resulting in action take place in the 
following order: thinking, feeling, willing, acting. In a 
strong mind all these processes are strong; in a weak mind 
they are weak. Therefore, after reading the tale of woe I 
hereby relate, betraying my strong feeling, do not condemn 
me as a weakling. I am far from being that. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


435 


Neither should you convict me as being filled with great pas- 
sion. You well know how my conduct toward you is absolutely 
free from anything passionate, not because I am a prude, but 
partly because I respect you and know you would not tolerate 
anything material and, above all, because my training has put 
my passions under my control, so that I must make an effort 
to yield to them. All moral people are that way. 

Nor can you call me a boy. My training has made me men- 
tally older than my years, and the preliminary economic 
struggle, of which you know much yourself, has broadened 
my mind more than the average young man’s of my age. I 
deprecate self-laudation, but I have friends older than my- 
self who, I know, are fond of me. 

Finally, Minnie, do not think I am excited. I can prove my 
sanity even now on the question under discussion, even on the 
two individuals under consideration. I proposed to you after 
mature deliberation, for I had thought about it long before 
you ever suspected. When I met you while I was still at college, 
I loved you, and you seemed unable to believe that I really 
meant it. Then, later, you assured me that I did not mean it, 
even if I thought so, for if I did, I could not find so much fault 
with you. Oh, Minnie, it is because I love you that I want to 
exert a good influence over you. I have been waiting patiently 
for you to come to this understanding, but, instead, you seem to 
be turning to other men who do not criticize you, thinking that 
by this they prove that they have greater regard for you. It 
is not so. 

I do not know how to write poetically. I have not read 
enough novels to have learned the tactics of winning a woman’s 
heart. I must confine myself to the truth in my own crude way. 
But I am sure you will recognize it as the truth. The Talmud 
says : ‘‘Words that leave the heart enter the heart.” 

Please do not consider the following a flattery of myself. 
You must admit that it is an accurate analysis of your mind. 
You cannot stand injustice. I have tried to make you believe 
that this quality is Judaic, and you have interpreted me as 
being narrow-minded, as desiring to influence you against 
association with Gentiles. I have tried to make you see 
that the work that you are spending your strength on now. 


436 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


like your promiscuous attempts to make converts to a mis- 
conceived Socialism before, is a waste of time. The work 
you are doing now is good enough for the men and women 
who see conditions only on the surface. For real thinking 
men and women the trouble lies too deep to be cured by 
such a mild measure. For trying to exercise my influence 
upon you, I have gained only your displeasure ; but if it has 
also jeopardized my chances for ever gaining your love, then 
you have allowed yourself to feel too great displeasure to be 
fair to me. 

Oh, Minnie, I love you so! I love you with every bit of my- 
self, with every throb of my heart. In these months of uncer- 
tainty let me tell you how I have spent my time. It was much 
like years ago when I was a boy and had a toothache. I would 
long for the day at night and for the night by day, in the hope 
of getting relief. So it has been these months. I have longed 
one day for the next in the hope of getting some encouragement 
from you. When the uncertainty of my future dawns upon me, 
when I think of having to live without you my skin quivers, my 
eyes fill with tears, and I must perforce think of something else. 
I wish I could invoke the aid of Shakespeare’s analytical mind 
and Milton’s muses to describe to you my suffering. I have not 
read a single page of anything in weeks, although I sit for hours 
at my books. I loathe the very food that is set before me. I 
am miserable without you. The world looks so uninteresting and 
so hollow with all the room for charity! Tears roll down my 
cheeks as I write now. I shudder at the wretched life that I 
may have to live. 

The Talmud says : “Forty days before the birth of the in- 
fant, a voice from heaven proclaims: ‘The son of this man for 
the daughter of this man.’ ” Oh, Minnie, I feel that we two 
were destined for each other. Can you think of Henry Street 
and feel otherwise? Why, Minnie, don’t you remember the 
lunch hour we spent in the air-shaft when the refuse came 
down on our heads, and the afternoon we spent afterwards in 
Rutgers Street Park? 

Even if I try to direct you, with me you would live the free 
life of a bird, for I believe in the freedom of women. Your life 
with me would be replete with real joys and real pains— even a 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


43 7 


bird has pains. What man or woman understands you better 
than I do? None. Oh, Minnie, I feel our souls are counter- 
parts of each other; fused together they would form a living 
symphony. 

And does the thought ever occur to you that you would dis- 
card Abraham for a broader-minded man? (I hereby affirm 
that I have no individual in mind.) [Can it be that Abraham 
was not thinking here of Mr. Grave?] How unjust! Minnie, 
you who want and strive to be so just, can you feel about me 
that I am narrow-minded because I do not approve of every- 
thing you do and say? You cannot condemn me so and dis- 
card me! Our souls are too tightly entwined in each other’s. 
You have been my biggest influence all the years. Have I not 
been any influence in your life at all? If you should tear your- 
self away from me a part of you would ever be with me. No 
man can have you complete. Oh, Minnie! 

Now I suffer. I am miserable. But at times I am hopeful. 
Should that hope be shattered I will live always a hollow ex- 
istence, my strong sense of duty keeping my body up. 

You may do what you like — live away from your family, 
quarrel with them, continue in your Settlement work, you may 
burn, kill, steal — I will love you. My love for you is as much 
a fact as the sun. I hereby state that I would sacrifice my 
honor for you. Thinking people agree that this and this only 
is true love. 

Dearest Minnie, say yes! 

Dearest Minnie, say yes ! 

The man whose life you are, 

Abraham. 


LI 

At sight of the thick letter lying on her desk in the 
Settlement the next morning, Minnie fell into a nervous 
tremor; she could scarcely tear the envelope open. But 
she read her lover’s outpouring from beginning to end. 


438 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


She went about her work dully, under the shock of the 
first realization of Abraham’s intensity of feeling. It 
dragged on her like a load. She could not cope with it ; 
she could not meet his ardor with even the feeblest glow. 
To be unresponsive to such love seemed to indicate a 
meanness in herself. Abraham was good, he deserved 
her love. She had been hard. With her mind, of course, 
she had taken in that he, well — not exactly that he loved 
her — his feelings had never impressed her as love. Now 
she was moved profoundly. But what could she do? She 
chided herself endlessly for her unresponsiveness. Her 
sense of guilt was making her wretched. 

At lunch hour she read the letter over again. Para- 
graphs struck her that had been overshadowed in the first 
reading. Abraham wrote that if she listened to an inner 
voice, she would hear that she loved him. As if she were 
superficial! Abraham always acted as though he knew 
her inner feelings better than she did herself. And there 
he was saying again that Mr. Grave had no regard for 
her. So she construed : “You seem to be turning to other 
men who do not criticize you, thinking that they thereby 
prove they have greater regard for you.” And upon this 
thought, that Mr. Grave had no regard for her, her mind 
dwelt persistently until, in her sensitiveness, the two short 
lines were trumpeting: “You are nothing but an insig- 
nificant little Jew girl from the dirty East Side with a 
charity record behind you; a mere nobody even yet — in 
a working-girls’ home.” 

“Hello, girlie!” called Mr. Grave from the threshold. 
“How are you? There’s so much work waiting for me 
upstairs that I haven’t the time even to talk about the 
weather.” 

Mr. Grave made no reference to a thick letter from 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


439 


the West in his breast-pocket, which he was hurrying up 
to his room to read. 

After he disappeared, Minnie kept staring into the hall 
to retain the mental vision of his elastic figure bounding 
up the stairs. She felt tremulously in need of him — of 
the greater perfection he stood for. The next morning 
Abraham was marvelling at her cruelty. She had writ- 
ten him a short, cold letter. 

LI I 

Abraham, who had resigned himself to a period of 
waiting, during which he trusted circumstances would 
right themselves, continued to visit Minnie, though he 
sedulously refrained from speaking his mind, even when 
he felt that doing so would hasten her restoration to 
sanity. 

As for Mr. Grave, he kept up his rainbow appearances 
in Minnie’s sky, leaving behind sunshine or clouds, ac- 
cording to the degree of his friendliness. His manner 
was so unfailingly affable and he showed, on the whole, 
so much pleasure in her company even when he re- 
mained only a moment or two that by degrees the effect 
of Abraham’s comments almost wore off. 

But her health began to suffer. She lost her appetite, 
and slept poorly, and always felt fagged. In addition 
Ida and Beckie brought distressing news of the business 
and the South African project. Within a short time a 
vast amount of maturity seemed to settle upon Minnie. 
She brooded over her mother’s hard lot and charged her- 
self with having contributed to it. She impressed herself 
now as having been the intolerant one, the peace dis- 
turber. Everything would have been different, she im- 


440 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


agined self -accusingly, had she not left home. Often it 
tortured her that she might have gone to college and de- 
veloped into a person whom Mr. Grave could look upon 
as fit for him, while her own love sufferings made her 
regard her mother’s marriage as quite a natural thing and 
gave her a sense of guilt toward Leopold. For Abraham 
she felt a new kindness and warmth ; her manner became 
more patient, her every act gentler. Her thoughts went 
back penitently to Morris Caplan, to the peremptoriness 
with which she had dismissed him, and she had inter- 
mittent impulses to write and tell him she regretted her 
harshness. And now and then a feeling of moral re- 
sponsibility toward Louis “the paintner” stabbed her soul. 
She seemed to have been drawn out of herself into a 
world of others. 

* * * * * * 

No sooner had Sarah consented to the South African 
plan than she was assailed by a brood of ominous fears. 
The parting framed itself in her mind as a definite one 
for all time. * She would never return, never see her 
children again. Inevitably regrets began to stir in her 
breast. She blamed herself unreservedly for not having 
hunted Minnie up as soon as the child left home. Though 
she dreaded making the admission to her own soul, she 
believed superstitiously that this new visitation was the 
chastisement for her conduct, and pictured herself in all 
sorts of attitudes, begging Minnie to forgive her. Often 
she retired into privacy to wring her hands and sob out 
her grief. 

During the weeks that Sarah had held off without mak- 
ing up her mind regarding South Africa Leopold had 
waited eagerly for her assent, so that his first reaction 
when she gave it was relief ; but as he began to visualize 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


441 


the possible course of their life in South Africa, he re- 
called that his previous sojourn there had not been ex- 
actly “golden,” and came to the conclusion, after much 
thought, that it would be wiser for him to go alone and 
if he found conditions favorable, send for Sarah after- 
ward. He told Sarah so. She stared at him as if he 
had slapped her, undergoing the agonies of the deserted 
wife — deserted, she wailed inwardly, because her bands 
business was no longer her alluring partner. Leopold 
surmised what was going on in her mind. He took her 
in his arms. 

“My dear,” he said, “you are more precious to me than 
ever. Don’t think with this trouble upon us both I would 
desert you.” He stooped and kissed her. She began to 
weep. “I want to go ahead because I think it will be 
safer. I do not want you to go to hardships. Upon my 
honor as a man, I will let you know the moment I can 
whether it is safe for you to come, and if it is not I will 
come right back to you. We will suffer together, not 
apart.” 

They embraced and wept silently. 

Soon afterwards Leopold decided upon the date of his 
sailing and bought his ticket. 

The household became enveloped in gloom. Even the 
girls, who by now had become accustomed to Leopold 
and his ways, and in whose heart he had found a place, 
were saddened by the approaching departure. In this 
period he treated them with an even more marked pa- 
ternal kindness and gentleness than he had been showing 
since the business had begun to decline and his hair to 
turn gray. When they returned from visits to Minnie, 
he would listen to what they had to say of her with an 
interest he had never before shown. Once or twice he 


442 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


found Sarah watching him intently and dropped his eyes, 
wondering whether she guessed that he was feeling re- 
morseful and that he wished now more than ever that 
Minnie had not spurned the home. 

One night, not long before the day of his leaving, 
Sarah asked him diffidently whether he would consent 
to go to the Settlement with her to say good-by to Min- 
nie. With some impatience, somehow anxious to hide his 
true feelings, he declined, though the jerk of his shoul- 
ders and his overemphasis revealed to his wife his real 
wish in the matter — that Minnie should come to him. 

All night Sarah tossed from side to side, hardly daring 
to formulate the plan that burned within her. In the 
morning she braced herself to the execution of it. As 
soon as Leopold and the girls left the house, she donned 
her street clothes and made for the Academy Settlement. 
If Leopold would not go to Minnie, she would bring 
Minnie to him. 

Strong as was her resolution, she was dragged back by 
doubts and fears as to how Minnie would receive her. 
She stopped time and again on the street to draw a deep 
breath. Her spirit was faint. Her very soul seemed to 
be graying. When she reached the building, she looked 
about cautiously as if in dread of an attack, then en- 
tered the vestibule, where she stood a moment or two 
shifting her weight from one foot to the other. A man 
entered and she inquired timidly for the office. “At the 
head of the stairs.” She waited for the man to disap- 
pear before she plodded up the steep flight. 

The office door was closed. Sarah stood outside grasp- 
ing the knob nervously, fearful of turning it. It moved 
a little, and she started. Her upper lip twitched inces- 
santly. Her short black jacket and black skirt, sagging 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


443 


in the back, accentuated the forlornness of her figure. A 
few strands of hair escaped from under her hat and lay 
along the side of her cheeks. Her lips were blue, and 
her face, though pale, looked heated. Small beads of 
perspiration stood out on her forehead. Whenever she 
thought she heard footsteps she would look about the hall 
cautiously and bring a sickly smile to her face, thinking 
her smile would make the object of her presence less 
obvious. 

“God in heaven, will she chase me out ? Will she chase 
me out?” her heart cried. The lines on her face would 
have made a stone weep with sympathy. 

At last she gained the courage to open the door par- 
tially, but instantly let it fall shut again. 

Minnie, who was alone in the office and was attracted 
by the mysterious swinging of the door, was too preoc- 
cupied, however, to rise and investigate. 

“Minnie! Minnele!” Sarah wailed behind the closed 
door, wringing her hands. She took a deep breath, and 
ventured to open the door again, a little wider. She con- 
trolled the workings of her face to frame a smile, though 
the tears streamed down her cheeks, and thrust her head 
in a little way. 

Minnie’s eyes met her mother’s. Sarah opened the 
door still farther, exposing her full front. Minnie rose 
from her chair and stared, actually believing that she 
beheld an apparition. 

Sarah entered quickly, letting the door fall shut behind 
her. 

“What’s the matter, mama?” cried Minnie, rushing to 
her, for Sarah looked ghastly. 

Sarah gulped. Unable to bring out a word, she broke 
down in a fit of weeping. Minnie stood helplessly at her 


444 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


side for a moment or two, possessed by that sense of un- 
reality in which people can do things altogether alien to 
them. In all the periods of brooding about her mother, 
Minnie had never thought of reconciliation, and now she 
took her in her arms and kissed and petted her and talked 
caressingly. 

“Don’t cry, mama. Come and sit down. Don’t cry, 
mama.” She led Sarah to a chair. She removed her hat 
and put the loose strands of hair in place, her heart ach- 
ing at their grayness. Minnie bent over her, put her 
arms about Sarah’s shoulders and laid her head against 
hers. “Mama, don’t cry. Why are you crying?” Then, 
waiting by Sarah’s side, she stood silent, helpless, pale 
and trembling. 

It was fully ten minutes before Sarah could master her- 
self. Then she asked Minnie to sit down and wanted to 
know if there was any objection to her being there, if she 
was taking Minnie’s time against the rules of the insti- 
tution. Minnie, eager to put her mother at ease, reas- 
sured her with feigned sprightliness. 

At last Sarah spoke of the purpose of her coming. 

“Your uncle,” she said, “is going to South Africa. It 
is a long way and you may never see him again. If any- 
one was at fault for the past, I was more to blame than 
he. God forgives, too. Come and say good-by to him 
and let him sail with a glad heart. He loves you. It will 
make me happy, too.” 

The sight of a proud person humbled in repentance is 
keen misery. Minnie suffered at seeing her mother so 
reduced. It was too much for her in her overwrought 
condition. A great faintness was stealing upon her : she 
made a prodigious effort not to succumb and said huskily 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


445 

that she herself had been to blame; she had been too 
young to know better. 

The two were silent, struggling to conquer a multitude 
of emotions. 

Voices sounded in the hall, and Minnie, thinking she 
heard Dr. Evangel and not wanting him to find her idle, 
hurriedly assured Sarah that she would come that very 
evening. Sarah, assuming that Minnie wanted her to 
leave, rose, but the voices receded, and Minnie, who 
feared that she might have appeared anxious for her 
mother to leave and have hurt her feelings, urged 
her to stay, and mustered up a fictitious vivacity. She 
chatted about all her affairs, her proposals of marriage, 
her lovely position, and, finally, to enliven Sarah par- 
ticularly, told of Chayim Schlopoborsky, upon whom, she 
remembered clearly, Sarah had many a time wished ill 
luck. Now was the moment when she could have her 
satisfaction. To Minnie's surprise, however, Sarah only 
looked away and muttered mournfully : 

“Poor man ! Poor, poor man !" 

What had changed her mother so? Minnie wondered 
sadly. 

“My dear child," Sarah broke out after a pause, “Mr. 
Caplan is a rich man ; you are a poor, homeless girl, and 
you are not very strong. You were in the Helina Hei- 
math once. Look how pale and thin you are. All you 
need is a few years of hard work and what is to pre- 
vent you from landing there a second time ? You should 
think carefully before you throw such a chance over." 
The mother sighed and wiped her eyes. A feeling of ill 
omen shot through Minnie, followed by an almost over- 
powering faintness. She had a flitting wish that her 
mother would leave. Simultaneously Sarah rose saying 


446 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


that she had better go. Minnie accompanied her to the 
door, where Sarah made her reiterate her promise to 
visit them that very evening. She kissed her daughter 
and left. 

Before Minnie had time to overcome the effects of the 
momentous visit, Mr. Grave came skipping up the stairs 
and bounded into the office. Minnie stared at him un- 
seeingly. Mr. Grave, who had no eyes for the girl’s 
startling pallor, cried happily : 

“Say, Miss Friskie, what do you think? The best girl 
in the world is coming this afternoon.” He took a tele- 
gram from his pocket. “It’s a great surprise to me. 
She’s coming — Marjorie Bell — we’re engaged, you 
know.” He fairly danced about the room. 

The ground slipped from beneath Minnie’s feet, some- 
thing whirled round and round in her brain. Then every- 
thing became a big black blur. 

She found herself in bed at the Young Ladies’ Lodge. 
It was the day after her promised visit home. 


LIII 

When at half-past eight Minnie had not yet come, 
Sarah, a little worried, said to Leopold: “Maybe she is 
detained in the office.” By nine o’clock she felt very un- 
comfortable and maintained silence. By half-past nine a 
horrid suspicion possessed her — a suspicion that her 
daughter had only pretended friendliness and had lied 
when she had said she would come. She kept her eyes 
averted from Leopold’s and started at every sound in the 
hall. At half-past ten she turned to Leopold in a frenzy 
of indignation, and cried : “Did you ever meet with such 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


44 7 

confounded duplicity in your life?” Leopold, full of 
pity for his wife, turned away and said nothing. 

Four days later, a few hours after Leopold had em- 
barked for South Africa, a postal card came from Min- 
nie, purposely couched in the past tense in order to spare 
her mother worry, explaining that she had been ill and 
saying she hoped to visit them in a few days. As Sarah 
had told Minnie just when Leopold would sail, the girl's 
apparent evasiveness incensed her so that jhe tore the 
card into bits and flung it from her as though it were a 
reptile. 

After this Minnie's name might not be mentioned in 
the household; Ida certainly, and even Beckie, were im- 
bued with their mother's sense of outrage. Ida took it 
upon herself to write Minnie a note telling her that they 
were “on'' to her tricks. 

It had taken much effort for Minnie to shake off her 
torpidity and write the card. After it was despatched 
she lay back in bed wondering who of the family would 
come to see her. The next day the letter in Ida's hand- 
writing was brought to her; for no definite reason the 
sight of it filled her with misgivings. Everything now, 
voices, footsteps, the faintest sounds set her heart gal- 
loping. 

She took in the contents of the letter in a blurred sort 
of way, for after the first sentence or two her mind 
seemed to stop functioning. She read it again. Each 
word stung, tore, cut. . . . She let it drop from her 
hands and fell in a heap upon the bed weeping and moan- 
ing until she was exhausted. . . . When she recovered 
herself, she did as Sarah had done with her card ; tore the 
letter into tiny pieces and flung it from her as though it 
were a reptile. They were a nasty, suspicious lot; she 


448 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


would never in her life have anything more to do with 
them. 

As the next few days brought no change in her con- 
dition, she sent word to Ella Liebman, who, in turn, sent 
word to Abraham, and the two consulted with the physi- 
cian. His diagnosis was “nervous prostration.” By their 
prompt endeavors Minnie was despatched to a New Jer- 
sey hill, where diversion, rest, fresh air, good food were 
to work her recovery. 

* * * * * * 

For weeks Minnie lay unable to exert herself. She 
would wonder and wonder, as her mother long ago had 
wondered about Elias, how she had become so ill when 
it seemed as if she had felt well only the day before her 
collapse. She had forgotten how for weeks she had 
dragged herself around and had hidden her exhaustion 
beneath chatter and laughter. We always reach the end 
of our tether unexpectedly. 

She was so tremulous now, so constantly beset by 
fears and worries ! She hated herself for being afraid of 
the least little thing. Her heart pounded at the sight of 
anyone and anything; the prospect of disapproval sent 
her into a veritable panic, destroyed completely every ves- 
tige of her self-confidence and foolishly magnified the 
might of others. She was full of weakness and meek- 
ness, both of which she resented as if with another self, 
a stronger and yet an ineffective self. And how the 
thought of an unpleasant letter made her tremble ! 

Her friends thought, wrongly, that she was brooding 
over Mr. Grave. The fact was, he had been dispelled 
from her mind as by a magic wand. She seemed even to 
lack the power to think of him. 

“Then what do you think about all the time while you 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


449 

lie silent with your forehead wrinkled ?” Abraham would 
ask. 

“Nothing especially. I am so tired all the time.” 

She would have told him, had she thought he could 
understand, of fears that stole upon her with the slimy 
wariness of a burglar in the night, how she struggled 
against them furiously as if in defense of her life. She 
would have told him of moods of foamy lightness, differ- 
ent from the light moods of before; they always held 
a diabolic threat, the threat of bursting like bubbles and 
scattering fears — fears 

She feared death — she feared a mean letter — she 
feared a scolding. Fear held her in a relentless grip. If 
her breath came short she would grow rigid, and wait 
transfixed, for the awful horror, death, to descend upon 
her. When her breath came normally again, she would 
laugh at herself and reason against her foolishness; she 
would say to herself, sanely enough, that death was the 
common fate of all and it mattered little whether it came 
to-day or later. But did her breath come short again, 
her reason was trampled under foot, and fear rode over 
her heart in ruthless disregard of her sanity, torturing 
her so that only by the mightiest will did she hold from 
shrieking for help. A maniac desire would possess her 
to run the full length of the universe out of reach of the 
horrible demon, death. She would have wished to strike 
out against it with the giant might of a beast. . . . And 
when the inward struggle was over, she would lie, her 
face pale, her energy spent, her eyes red-rimmed and 
tearful, her soul limp. 

The agonies of the damned must be mild in compari- 
son with the mental torments of the patrons of that com- 
monly supposed pseudo-illness, nervous prostration. 


450 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Abraham Ratkin, who promptly proceeded to supply 
himself with a store of information on the subject of ner- 
vous breakdowns, arrived at the generally accepted theory 
that distractions and activity should be forced upon the 
patient. 

“I don’t feel like walking now.” 

“But you must ” 

Tearful, tired, Minnie, outwardly acquiescent, would 
get up and walk until too exhausted to go farther. 

“You have no will power.” 

In the early stages of the illness when Abraham made 
this charge, she would be crushed with the absurd dread 
that he might — yes, strike her; and though she knew it 
was absurd, she would cower pitifully, gulp and choke 
and remain silent, struggling against another terror — 
that she might shriek out loud and so betray her insanity. 

But later, when a little of her strength came back, she 
attempted refutations. 

“You think I am sick from sheer stubbornness.” 

“No, I think everything depends upon exerting will 
power. If you would make up your mind that you are 
well, you would be well.” 

“But maybe the reason I can’t make up my mind is 
because I am sick.” 

“You seem to know more than eminent physicians.” 

“I am having the experience and am not exactly an 
idiot. Even a dumb animal knows when he feels sick ; 
why shouldn’t I?” 

So their conversations would always end in mutual dis- 
approval. 

Abraham, who now had no rivals in devotion to Min- 
nie, felt entitled to the veritable obedience that husbands 
may exact. When he found Minnie holding to her own 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


45i 

way in spite of her weakness, it was as if ice drippings 
were trickling down on his heart. 

Minnie, for her part, after their altercations, was left 
regretfully brooding over her part in them. She ought 
to take his false charges in silence, for who else was de- 
voted to her? And he surely meant it all for her good. 
He was so kind. She felt an ungrateful wretch. He 
was the only one, except now and then Ella Liebman, 
who ever came to see her. Some of the Settlement folks 
had at first sent cards and letters. Even these had now 
ceased. How meaningless their friendliness had been; 
they had not sincerely cared for her. How right Abra- 
ham had been about this and about Mr. Grave, too. Mr. 
Grave had not been a friend in earnest. She had simply 
amused him. Now that she was sick, he was over and 
done with her and someone else was amusing him. He 
had sent her a letter, and there his concern had ended. . . . 
Abraham came every week to see her; he worried and 
scurried for her ; he was a real friend. Even if he was 
wrong about some things, he was sincere and earnest and 
dependable. She was filled with solemn appreciation, 
the solemn appreciation of goodness that comes to the 
older, battered ones of the world. At his next visit, she 
determined, she would make an outward show of appre- 
ciation. 

At one time during Minnie’s illness, when he had felt 
that others beside himself ought to be concerned about 
her, Abraham had suggested that she call upon her fam- 
ily. She had flared up resentfully. Now her mildness 
of manner lasting through several visits, emboldened him 
to mention the matter again, as it had become a fixed idea 
of his that the best time for a reconciliation was while she 
was ill. 


452 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“You really ought to make up with your people, Min- 
nie, he insisted. “They merely misunderstood you.” 

This was too much. In spite of Minnie’s supreme ef- 
forts at self-control, her rebellious feelings triumphed. 

“Don’t you realize,” she burst out, “that they suspected 
me of deceiving them? And don’t you realize the bru- 
tality of Ida’s letter? I never, never want to have any- 
thing to do with them again.” 

Hardly were the words out of her mouth when repent- 
ance set in again. She had meant always to be agreeable 
to her good friend. 

Abraham frowned. His heart, tired and tried, re- 
sponded to nothing in the girl but her sad incorrigibility. 

They sat silent for a long while, Abraham wondering 
with misgivings how it would be to have on his hands 
the rest of his days a wife like Minnie, stubborn, with an 
unbendable will; and Minnie plaguing herself that, con- 
trary to her resolutions, she had again given offense 
where gratitude was due. “If only he could know how 
sorry I am. How I wish he would only understand my 
side.” Despite herself other thoughts crept in: “He has 
eyes for nothing but the normal and makes suggestions 
always that admirably fit nothing but the normal. He 
does not see that there are no rules for exceptions. . . .” 
Then her heart went back to him. He was pale and 
seemed to be suffering. She wanted to lay her hand on 
his, to stroke his hair. Perhaps she ought to kiss him 
good-by — then perhaps he would forgive her outburst. 
She moved her hand slightly to place it on his, but with- 
drew it, out of timidity and the unprecedentedness of 
such a manifestation in her. Nevertheless, impatient with 
herself for her wavering, she clung to the thought of kiss- 
ing him when he left. “I’ll just kiss him naturally,” she 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


453 


reflected. . . . “I’ll say: ‘Abraham, won’t you kiss me?’ 
. . . I’ll say: ‘Abraham, you’re so good/ and just kiss 
him.” She got herself nervous, confused, excited, anx- 
ious to have it over with. 

When finally Abraham rose to leave, she jumped hast- 
ily out of the hammock. Her breath came quickly. He 
held out his hand. She felt as if danger were lurking. 
He was going — she couldn’t say it — he would never know 
how grateful she was to him for everything. . . . Her 
pulses throbbed. “Hurry up! Hurry up!” sounded in 
the turmoil of her mind. 

“Kiss me, Abraham,” she said tremulously. 

It came much too suddenly for Abraham, who was not 
a man of impulse. He hesitated. An obstruction was 
removed, leaving a clear view in which Minnie stood out 
a too-easily procurable wife; he could have her now, at 
once. But his desire was somehow not present. Instead, 
there was a much increased sense of the hazards of a 
union with so odd a creature. With schoolmasterly pre- 
cision he said : 

“You had better control yourself. Don’t fall in love 
with me now. We will wait until you get well and then 
talk it all over.” He fluttered his lids. 

Minnie was struck dumb by an immense shame. But 
somehow, mechanically, she got through with the leave- 
taking, Abraham’s figure a blur before her eyes, his voice 
sounding muffled and indistinct. . . . When he was gone, 
she sought to emerge from her stupor and grasp the ac- 
tuality of what had passed. She gave herself a mental 
shake, as it were. The humiliation was horrible, hor- 
rible. She hid her face in her hands and dropped into 
the hammock shaken by dry sobs. . . . The supper-bell 
rang ; each clang was a lash on her bruised nerves. She 


454 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


remained with her head buried low in the hammock until 
long after nightfall. 

LIV 

For three months the Settlement sent Minnie her 
weekly salary. Then came a pleasant letter from Dr. 
Evangel (in response to one from Minnie informing him 
that though the three months’ vacation had improved her 
health she was not strong enough yet to work), which 
said cordially that she was to take as much vacation as 
she needed, the position would be kept open for her; 
but since it was now necessary to engage a substitute in 
her absence, the Settlement could no longer continue to 
pay her salary. 

When Abraham, a week later, found her looking 
poorly, he wondered somewhat contritely whether his 
unresponsiveness at the previous visit had given her a 
setback. Minnie, divining his suspicions, promptly told 
him of Dr. Evangel's letter. 

Here was a problem ! 

“It was very nice of them to pay me for as long as 
they did,” said Minnie. 

“Yes, it was.” 

Nevertheless, here was a problem! Minnie had no 
savings. 

Abraham sat silent, with lowered, meditative eyes, 
which he raised to Minnie once or twice scrutinizingly. 

“Just how do you feel?” he asked finally. “Don’t you 
think you are well enough to go back to work? Maybe 
if you made up your mind ” 

She was tempted to say she would try, for his suspicion 
that she was weak of will somehow always stung her as 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


455 


if it were a reflection on her character. But her better 
sense rose to warn her that if she went to work prema- 
turely she would break down again. 

'‘You see, Abraham,” she said, “I am feeling better 
now, and I know I am better. In the same way I would 
know if I were altogether well. I think it would be un- 
safe yet for me to go back to work. I don’t feel strong 
enough, but I will be soon, I think, if I don’t have things 
to worry me and set me back, like this letter. I haven’t 
slept for two nights.” 

A long pause, during which Abraham looked as if he 
were solving a problem in higher mathematics. Then he 
said : 

“You will have to take money from me until you think 
you are well enough to go back to the Settlement.” 

She started. “I won’t go back to the Settlement,” she 
cried excitedly. 

“What do you mean?” Abraham was astonished. 

“I have a feeling of terrible aversion for anything of 
the old. It’s like thinking of the dead in the grave.” 
She was in a panic as if it were in Abraham’s power to 
force her to return to the Settlement and the old. 

How should Abraham have known that it is from pre- 
cisely this aversion for the old that the more fortunate, if 
same kind of sufferers as Minnie, are impelled to seek 
foreign shores and real diversion? 

Abraham laughed, not heartily nor merrily ; he laughed 
good-naturedly at this new idiosyncracy. Minnie heard 
a ring of Ida’s voice in his laugh ; it was mocking her : 
“Highfalutin — fancy — high-tone.” She shuddered and 
felt the clammy hand of fear, now a much less frequent 
visitor, clutching at her heart, curling itself about her 


456 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


spirits like a serpent. It was fear of being outwitted in 
her resolution not to return to the Settlement. 

* * * * * * 

Abraham had left the landlady of the New Jersey hill 
money for Minnie’s board for the week and was quite 
willing to pay for her regularly until she was well. As a 
thing apart from the question of support, he told himself, 
Minnie’s mother and sisters ought to be made to realize 
that she was really sick and that they were guilty of neg- 
lect. If he had been as close to them as to Minnie, he 
would have urged them, instead of Minnie, to take the 
first step toward reconciliation. 

After deliberation, he paid the Mendels a visit. 

They met his suggestion with a tirade ; he was lending 
his protection to a traitor and pretender. They swept 
the air with their respective hands and vowed it made 
no difference to them if she died. Indeed, they were cer- 
tain she would surely outlive them. “A convenient bluff, 
this nervous prostration,” was the finale. 

Abraham would not have wished to be guilty of neg- 
lecting a sick person, but the responsibility of nurturing 
imaginary or pretended illness was just as bad. While 
he was not persuaded by the Mendels into their view, 
yet he found himself wishing that Minnie would brace up 
and become her own keeper again. He felt as must the 
parent of a trying adolescent who looks forward to the 
time when his child will have crossed the threshold of 
safe maturity. He made no answer to Sarah’s onslaught : 
“My daughter ? She is not my daughter. She is dead to 
me. A trickster! Only a girl with a stone for a heart 
would have done such an outrageous thing, pretended to 
be sick just at that time. If she had said she did not 
want to come, it would not have been one-thousandth as 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


45 7 

vile. I am through with her forever” Though he felt 
the injustice of the accusation, he could not muster up 
the fighting spirit to convince this infuriated mother of 
her mistake, and allayed his conscience by persuading 
himself that the attempt would in any event be futile. . . . 
Anyway, the Mendels disgusted him. 

He walked home slowly, weighted down by his respon- 
sibility. For the first time since matters had assumed 
their abnormal course, he frankly and clearly hoped that 
Minnie was not in love with him. He wondered how it 
was he had never before realized their incompatibility 
and had overlooked the intrinsic, basic deficiencies of the 
Mendels’ morals. Minnie would as certainly, he felt, 
develop into a Sarah as two peas develop alike in a pod. 
He found himself shrinking from the thought of her as 
a wife. Abraham’s soul craved a loving, tender crea- 
ture, domestic peace and harmony. 

LV 

The next day the Mendels, in a cooler mood, discussed 
Minnie among themselves and decided with all generosity 
that, to be on the safe side so far as their moral respon- 
sibility was concerned, they had better send her five dol- 
lars to help her with her expenses. Ida undertook to 
execute the family’s resolution. With the money went 
an epistle. Minnie was not to believe she could have a 
single cent more, Ida wrote; and as for her nervous pros- 
tration, its elements were imagination, exaggeration and 
affectation ; she couldn’t fool them! If Abraham had any 
sense, she couldn’t fool him either; and if he chose to 
spoil her he could do so on his own money, not theirs. 

In the violent rush of indignation that swept upon Min- 


458 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


nie when she read the letter, she came near tearing it up, 
five-dollar bill and all, but — what was that about Abra- 
ham? What had Abraham to do with it? She read the 
letter again. No other conclusion than the right one was 
possible. She marvelled at his audacity ; outrage tore at 
her soul. . . . On the spur of an impulse she snatched 
a sheet of paper and wrote Ida : “Go to hell and use the 
five dollars to pay your way,” and thrust the currency 
bill, along with the note, into an envelope. Too spent by 
the burst of frenzy to post it immediately, she dropped 
heavily into a chair at the window and looked out. The 
tree-tops which seemed so merrily to be reaching to the 
sky drew her eyes, and she stared and stared without 
moving, thoughts of all sorts staggering through her 
mind. Envy of these living things which did not know 
of the sordidness of human relations brought tears to 
her eyes. For the first time in months she thought of 
Gregory Chernin, of the fineness of soul that his whole 
personality distilled, and she felt an at-oneness with him, 
a yearning and a craving for contact with the beautiful. 
All her anger mellowed into a sadness, into a depressing 
realization that she was a foreigner in her world, a mis- 
fit. She rose, took the note she had written, tore it up 
and returned the money without explanation. 

When Abraham came the next Sunday she could 
hardly wait to question him. 

He flushed and dropped his eyes. “Why?” he asked. 
“Did any of them come to see you or did they send you 
money ?” 

“They sent me money.” 

His eyelids fluttered with pleasure. His visit had, after 
all, been effective. The Mendels were not as bad as 
their bark. 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


459 


“Well,” he said, “then you should be satisfied.” 

“You really were there then?” 

“Yes. I could not see that there was anything else to 
do. They owe it to you to look out for you when you are 
sick. If I were not your friend, for example, what would 
you do then? It is their duty, their moral duty, to take 
care of you.” 

Minnie's blood rushed to her face. 

“But I did not give you permission to go. Ida sent 
me a note along with the money and, it seems, she spoke 
for the family ; she wrote as though I had sent you to beg 
for me. She said they were sending me five dollars and 
would not send me one cent more, that I need not ask 
for more. How do you suppose I feel ?” 

Abraham was shocked, staggered. His mission had 
been too well meant for such results. His lips opened 
once, twice, and made no sound. 

They were silent for some time, cogitating. Minnie 
concluded that Abraham's recourse to the family came 
from his unwillingness to pay her board. 

“I am sorry it turned out so badly,” Abraham broke in 
on her thought. “I meant well. You must not think I 
went because I want to be relieved of the financial re- 
sponsibility I have undertaken.” 

Minnie made no reply, but when, on leaving, he handed 
her a roll of bills, she refused to take them, and all his 
efforts to persuade her were vain. 

“What are you going to do?” he asked, truly dis- 
tressed. 

She tried to evade, but upon his insisting said : 

“I lent a friend money once, and now that / am in 
need she will return the courtesy, I feel sure.” More 
quietly she added : “As soon as I go back to work, I will 


4<5o SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


return everything I have borrowed.” Her tone forbade 
arguing. 

A shade of a shadow of relief flitted across Abraham’s 
face as he placed the bills back into his pocket with a light 
sigh. 

She sat for a long time after he left immersed in 
thought. She had slaved from very infancy, and now 
that she was used up she was nobody’s responsibility. 
She had served the world as a worker, yet the same world 
seemed to consider it none of its business that she had 
worn herself out serving it. If it was possible for her to 
scramble up again, well and good, it seemed to say ; and 
if not, well and good, too. And yet as soon as she was 
again equipped, this world would commandeer her work- 
ing powers once more. ‘‘What an awfully unfair game !” 
She seemed to be living through an immense moment — 
one of those moments during which life flares up in great 
gleams. . . . “Only a hair’s breadth divides me from the 
Helina Heimath, from the Peoples Charities. ... As if 
it is my fault that the world did not remunerate me for 
my best efforts sufficiently so that I could provide against 
this emergency; and the world has the right to punish 
me besides by making me an object of to-day’s charity — 
equal to the slops thrown a pig. . . . Something’s wrong 
somewhere. . . She seemed to hear Gregory Chernin 
agreeing with her ; she seemed to feel his presence close, 
his soul at one with hers, as if he of all the world felt 
with her. . . . She wondered where he could be at that 
very moment — perhaps thinking of her, too. ... By a 
swift combination of thought and emotion she began to 
wonder whether Boston wouldn’t be a better place to go 
to than New York. New York loomed up grimy, hold- 
ing nothing more for her than a repetition of the old hard- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


461 

ships, terminating in another spell of sickness. It would 
be getting up in the morning, with the subway crush and 
the nightly rush to get home in time for supper; with 
the evening either empty or spent at work in the Settle- 
ment, or in a stuffy theater, or listening to the false charm 
of music — false because it stirred a multitude of divine 
emotions which would only go to smash in the morrow’s 
drabness. . . . The prospect of all this over again filled 
her with unmitigated aversion. She marvelled now that 
so many people were willing to live exactly that sort of 
thing for a whole lifetime. . . . “Boston has such lovely 
suburbs, everybody says. Maybe I can get work in 
one. . . Her heart swelled with hopes. 

LVI 

Poverty, the devoted cur, is not to be shaken off by a 
mere change of locality. 

Minnie reached Boston with only five dollars in her 
pocket and enough experience to know she was standing 
on thin ice, but an unshaken will not to take more money 
from Ella Liebman, kind and urgent though she had been. 
Minnie was depending upon the Fates to be quick in find- 
ing her work, and quick they were. Though exhausted 
from the trip, she went straight from the railroad station 
to an employment agency and was promptly engaged as 
stenographer by a Mr. Little of Little’s Hotel. She saw 
in this good luck a desire on the part of the Supreme 
Being to redeem Himself, and out of sheer gratitude she 
could have hugged the telephone to her breast when Mr. 
Little’s voice came through the receiver saying: “I shall 
expect you then this evening at eight o’clock.” 

****** 

Little’s Hotel, in one of Boston’s lovely suburbs, with 


462 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


the very best service and fare to recommend it, boasted 
of even more to do the same. What this was Minnie 
did not learn until after she had been in Mr. Little's em- 
ploy two weeks, had written Abraham that all his fears 
had been groundless, as she was ideally placed, had sent 
three joyous missives to Ella Liebman, and had decided 
that she was quite the luckiest person in the world. Then 
came knowledge and a turn in her affairs. Mr. Little 
asked her to read proof of a new edition of the hotel's 
descriptive booklet. 

“Hebrews, Dogs, Consumptives, and Other Objec- 
tion ables Not Accommodated." 

Minnie looked at “Hebrews" with the incredulity with 
which one views one's own name in print, and tried to 
associate it, for its serious meaning, with the last words, 
“not accommodated." From some perverse impulse she 
wanted to laugh, and smiled in compromise. She held 
the proof off at arm’s length. “Gracious! What can it 
mean?" she asked herself, and decided to put the ques- 
tion to Mr. Little. But Mr. Little always wore such a 
drawn brow, as if something provoked him, and had such 
an intimidating way of looking over the heads of his em- 
ployees that she could not pluck up the courage to ap- 
proach him. 

The matter lingered with her like a bad odor, though 
she made every effort to forget it, and tried to persuade 
herself that it must apply only to the unrefined. But — 
her mind carried her on with faultless logic — there were 
unrefined Italians, unrefined Irish, unrefined Americans, 
too. The booklet did not discriminate against these. All 
Jews were referred to. It was difficult to accept the fact. 

A few days later Mr. Little turned a perplexed face 
upon Minnie, with whom he was alone in the office. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 463 

“Miss Mendel,” he asked, “have you ever heard the 
name Pashenz ? Does it sound Hebrew to you ?” 

Minnie’s color rose. She straightened her shoulders 
and rested her eyes on him. 

“No, it does not.” 

“I didn’t think so either. But this is,” he said, holding 
up another letter signed Moskowitz. 

“Yes, it is,” replied Minnie quietly. 

Mr. Little faced his desk again. 

Minnie, stiffened into immobility by a prickling swarm 
of peculiar sensations, sat staring at his back. Presently 
he turned and asked her to take dictation. She crossed 
over to him with an unconscious air of haughtiness, a lit- 
tle above herself. 

To Mr. Pashenz went a letter offering him the widest 
choice of rooms. Mr. Moskowitz was told that the hotel 
was crowded to its capacity. 

She walked back to her desk listlessly, overcome by a 
new kind of depression, in which feeling for self was ex- 
alted to a lofty sympathy with others. For the first time 
she realized she was Jewish, that there was a Jewish 
world, distinct and apart, which suffered and was at the 
mercy of others. She felt the fibers of her heart branch- 
ing out. 

“You are a Jew,” the keys of the typewriter clicked, 
“you are not welcome here.” The cloud that had lifted 
for the two brief weeks descended again, seeming to gloat 
in its smugness. “What will you do? You cannot stay 
here!” Tears came to her eyes. “You have no money 
and you are not altogether well and you have no place to 
go to,” the keys clicked on melancholically. She felt like 
a beast with a bit much too thick for its mouth. She was 
aghast at the problem that faced her. 


464 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Are all Christians like Mr. Little?” she asked the 
clicking keys. “No one at the Settlement was like Mr. 
Little. Doctor Evangel wasn’t. No one was — not Mr. 

Grave ” She zapped the keys for mentioning this 

name. The keys redeemed themselves. “Mr. Maloney 
was a Christian, and he loved you and wanted to marry 
you. He certainly did not hold your Jewishness against 
you.” Minnie smiled at her whimsical conversation with 
the keys, and for a moment felt as if Mr. Maloney’s 
spirit were hovering over her protectively against Mr. 
Little. When Mr. Maloney’s spirit departed, she felt 
lonely. “Oh, dear!” she thought, “I ought not to have 
gone away from everybody I know. Abraham was 
right.” She wiped tears away so that she could type the 
letter to Mr. Moskowitz telling him there was no room 
for him at Little’s Hotel. Abraham was right about many 
things, she suddenly saw. The keys clicked to her in his 
words : 

“Thus has all your race been hounded throughout the 
•centuries. Thus have they come by their despised faults, 
aggressiveness, greed, servility. These are their weapons 
of self-defense.” 

Things personal to her seemed to shrink, while her 
heart expanded with what was akin to maternal love for 
the Schlopoborskys of the world, the Henry Street neigh- 
bors, the Morris Caplans. 


LVII 

The physical geography of Mr. Pashenz proclaimed 
him a member of the unwelcome race. Mr. Little was 
provoked. Of course, it was not Minnie’s fault, he al- 
lowed; the man’s misdemeanor was not written in his 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


465 

name. But Mr. Little instructed Minnie to be miserly of 
civility to the gentleman. That, he said, was his success- 
ful method for giving an unwelcome guest to understand 
that he was to take himself off. 

Minnie’s color rose furiously. A thousand different 
feelings seemed to explode in her heart. She jumped 
from her seat and, contrary to a well-thought-out reso- 
lution to remain in her present position until the last of 
the month, when her salary would afford her a margin 
of safety, she burst out: 

“Mr. Little, you had better get someone to take my 
place. I am a Jew, too.” Contempt rang in her voice 
and blazed in her eyes. 

Mr. Little, shaken out of his equilibrium, looked up at 
her without replying. He tchicked his lips in sheer em- 
barrassment. Then, after a moment’s pause, he said with 
all courtesy and sincerity : 

“I am sorry. I assure you, some of my best friends are 
Jews, but in a hotel they cannot mix.” 

It was queer that some of his best friends should be 
Jews. Minnie was muddled, but her paramount feeling 
was of insult. 

“I have Gentile friends, too,” she said with dignity. 
“None of them were ever so insulting.” Tears of impo- 
tence sprang to her eyes. 

Mr. Little said nothing more. Minnie went to her 
room, where she hastily flung into her hand-bag all her 
worldly possessions and soon re-appeared for her salary. 
At the desk she found Mr. Pashenz calling Mr. Little’s 
attention to an overcharge. 

“These cigarettes amount to $1.17. You’ve got me 
charged with $1.27.” 

Mr. Little rectified the error with perfect courtesy but 


466 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


with a faint expression about the corners of his mouth 
which said: 

“You’d think it was ten dollars. Not a cent ever es- 
capes them.” 

It was Minnie’s turn. 

“Let’s see,” said Mr. Little, “your salary is thirty dol- 
lars a month. You are leaving two days in advance — 
that’s about $27.50 due you.” He made a rapid calcula- 
tion. “No, $27.09.” 

Turning to leave, Minnie found herself facing Mr. 
Pashenz, an undersized man, with dark, melancholy eyes, 
out of which he looked from down up as if probing space. 

“You’re not wanted here,” was on the tip of her 
tongue. 

Around the man’s mouth played a cynical smile, which 
threatened a hard, bitter laugh. Minnie lowered her head 
and hastened out. A few moments afterwards she was 
on a car bound for Boston. 

She reached the city late in the afternoon and stood 
irresolutely looking up and down the street. Her hat 
was blown slightly askew, some loose strands of hair 
straggled over her eyes and down her cheeks. Her Hand- 
bag, pulling her lop-sided, gave the appearance of being 
heavier than it actually was. Her face was wan. She 
was a forlorn figure. With the timidity of a sensitive 
person with whom insult lingers she approached a police- 
man and asked him if he could recommend a place for 
her to stay overnight. It would have taken less keenness 
than this shrewd officer’s to observe that his customer 
was of the class that toil and spin. Her worn raiment 
identified her. 

“There’s the Elizabeth Home for Girls, Miss,” he said 
and let the statement hang in midair until Minnie say- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


467 

ing “Thank you,” he straightened up in the way of a 
policeman when he would like to vaunt his omniscience. 
He directed her, swinging his club expansively. 

One can never be sure in Boston when a simple errand 
will resolve itself into a journey, a tour, a pilgrimage. 
You feel like a spinning top as you wind your way 
through the puzzlesome streets. By the time Minnie 
finally reached the Elizabeth Home she had been re- 
signed to the fictitious existence of such a Home and 
her doubts had been strong as to whether Boston em- 
braced more than the one corner from which she had 
started out an X-number of times. 

The Elizabeth Home and the Young Ladies’ Lodge 
were identical in character, with the exception that the 
Elizabeth Home was a strictly Christian institution, as 
proclaimed by a large oil painting of the crucified Saviour 
in the lobby. 

The lady stationed at a desk in the hall to receive new- 
comers wore somber black and a facial expression that 
would have dampened the spirits of a sunny day. Since 
the institution was, first and foremost, respectable, each 
prospective guest was required to state her pedigree and 
give information on such personal points as the church 
she attended and the regularity of her attendance. 

When an outlaw escapes from one officer of the peace 
only to fall into the clutches of another, he must experi- 
ence some such sensation as did Minnie at the last ques- 
tion. Her heart gave a leap, her eyes a swift dart to the 
door. She had the impulse to give the somber little lady 
a neat slap in the face and run away. But the beauty of 
normal people is that their criminal and insane impulses 
come like lightning and are dispelled like a whiff. 


468 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“I am a Jewess,” Minnie replied quietly, “I do not go 
to church.” 

The lady floundered, then expressed herself as having 
no objection to Minnie personally; the institution, how- 
ever, made sectarianism a principle ; but, of course, since 
she was a stranger in the city and night was advancing, 
she could remain, and every effort would be made for 
her comfort and every help extended to find another 
home for her in the morning. 

No queerer place than this world seemed possible. 
Minnie shrugged her shoulders and looked hard at the 
little woman in somber black. Had all of the world’s 
lunatics been dumped in Massachusetts? A smile played 
on Minnie’s lips, in her heart was a moan. Could she 
have seen herself at that moment, she would have recog- 
nized Mr. Pashenz’ own expression. 

She rose, picked up her hand-bag, thanked the little 
lady, and said she would find another place. The little 
lady followed her to the door, assuring her again with all 
courtesy that she was welcome for the night if she cared 
to remain. 

An exaggerated calm possessed Minnie, the calm that 
comes from the realization that in calm alone lies safety. 
“It’s no use zu talkin’ ” — in dark moods she joked with 
herself in Morris Caplan’s lingo ; at this moment she ex- 
perienced a fleeting homesickness for him — “I’m up 
against it more than I bargained for.” The very terror 
that struck at her heart warned her to keep her mind 
clear. She was alone in a big city ; it was dusk already. 

Across the street was a park. She was very tired and 
would rest there a moment. On the nearest bench sat a 
woman, a little farther away, on another bench, was a 
man with his back turned. The woman, looking up as 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 469 

Minnie approached, so greatly suggested the somber lady 
of the Elizabeth Home that Minnie was taken by a freak- 
ish impulse. 

“Madam,” said she, smiling and bowing deferentially, 
“have you any objections to my sitting beside you? I 
am a Jew.” 

The weazened little woman lifted a thoroughly scared 
face. She rose and edged away cautiously from this 
lunatic. 

At the first word from Minnie’s lips the solitary man 
sitting on the next bench turned round and stared. A 
look of delight lit up his face. He rose and stepped 
towards Minnie, whose eyes, following the retreating 
little figure in black, encountered his. 

“Gregory !” 

“Minnie !” He took her in his arms. 

LVIII 

The train was speeding through a spring landscape. 
It was a day of burgeoning. The trees swelling out of 
their winter starkness, the fresh green blades peeping out 
where the dead brown leaves had been swirled away by 
the wind, the tender spikes of forest growth pricking up 
out of the black soil all seemed to say: “We are alive 
again.” 

Looking out of the train window Minnie felt her soul 
akin to this budding joyousness. Like a mother, whose 
attention is engaged elsewhere, by half conscious effort 
discourages a child’s interruption, she discouraged a 
minor note of melancholy that tugged at her heart. How 
impossible it was to realize with dear Gregory sitting 
there beside her, holding her hand, smiling his all-embrac- 
ing smile whenever she raised her eyes to him, that a 


4/0 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


blight was eating at their spring joyousness ! He did not 
even look like a sick man. His color was better, his eyes 
brighter than on the night of the street meeting. But 
mercy, the eyes were too bright, the color too good! A 
pain like a sharp, thin needle drilled through her heart, 
and the spring landscape merged with an autumnal wind 
that groaned weirdly : “Your lover is sick ; the Alkrusht 
Sanitarium for him.” 

To divert her mind, she turned to Gregory and said: 

“By the way, dear, I wrote Dr. Judson that I am a 
Protestant.” 

Gregory smiled. It was a joke between them that 
he had saved her from the maws of sectarianism by tak- 
ing her with him to his own boarding-house where there 
had happened to be a room vacant. In order to be with 
him at Saranac she had applied for a position as secre- 
tary and, since a Protestant was required, she had 
promptly subscribed to the faith. 

“You’re a little liar,” said Gregory, “what woulcl Mr. 
Little say?” 

She would have sworn her soul away to be with him. 
She pressed his hand and smiled up at him wistfully, and 
such a passionate yearning to save this dear one from ill 
fate welled up in her that the tender words fairly burst 
from her lips : 

“Oh, Gregory, dear, I love you so !’* 

He looked down on her tenderly for a moment and 
then looked away. 

Oh, if she could only convince him that it had not been 
wrong for him to admit his love for her ! She lived over 
again their hour together in the Boston Public Gardens 
when his love avowal had come, as he later put it, inde- 
pendently of his better reason. The night of the street 
meeting he had already known that he was sick ; and that 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


47i 


night he had known for certain that the little gray-eyed 
girl of the gaming days was an integral part of his being, 
that when years before he had urged his mother to look 
her up at the Argushes and explain away her misunder- 
standing, he had urged it in the hope that she would come 
again to their home, for he had missed her greatly; and 
that when word came later from the Argushes of her 
disappearance, his scanning of remote corners of the tene- 
ment halls for a letter from her which the careless letter- 
carrier must certainly have misplaced, was from a feeling 
deep, deep-rooted. 

She sighed as she looked up at the dear averted face, 
every line of which told of the soul within, the soul 
which she had loved in Mr. Grave’s shell. She leaned 
her head lightly against his shoulder. . . . She was be- 
trothed to this man, this man of real heart and mind and 
soul, this man who was the answer to the deepest call of 
her being. How she loved him ! Her life, her devotion, 
her everything would be dedicated to him. He would 
grow better in the Alkrusht Sanitarium. She needed 
nothing for herself, everything, every bit of everything 
would go to him, to bring the normal color to his cheeks, 
to reduce the feverish glitter of his dear eyes — to save 

him Next spring all would be well. It would be 

just such a day of burgeoning when they would go to a 
little home of their own — they would live where there 
was a lovely landscape — she would keep him in the sun- 
shine — there would be sunshine everywhere 

“Saranac! Saranac!” called the conductor. 

LIX 

In the mournful glamour of the reds and yellows of 
decaying nature* Minnie walking alone where she and 


472 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Gregory had walked before, sitting alone where she and 
Gregory had sat before, her great gray eyes searching 
vacancy, made a dejected, listless figure. One day Dr. 
Judson called her to his private office. 

“My dear,” he said, “won’t you try to rouse yourself, 
to cry, to let loose ? It would do you so much good.” 

“I can’t.” 

“Then make a change, seek something new, go home 
to your people, your old friends. It will take you away 
from your grief.” 

Take her away from her grief ! As if her grief could 
be left behind, as if the emptiness of the world would not 
follow her elsewhere ! A sigh mingled with a wan smile 
of appreciation. 

“You are very good. But won’t you let me stay here? 
I would so much rather.” 

“Certainly. Yes, indeed. I’m mighty glad to have 
you ; I was thinking of what might be best for you ” 

“It’s best for me to stay.” 

* * * * * * 

Minnie’s soul basking in the sunshine of memories of 
Gregory flowered into the beauty of its promise. Not a 
thought, not a feeling of hers was apart from his in- 
fluence. Big in mind, vast in spirit, with a thorough com- 
prehension of men and things, alive to weaknesses, tol- 
erant, with a heart of love and with a tempering sanity, 
he had raised Minnie to the standard to which she had 
blindly, unknowingly reached out. The world was no 
longer the same to her, nor were things, nor were people. 
What had seemed vice, now in the illumination of Greg- 
ory’s tolerance and love, was mere involuntary fault, sel- 
fishness a mere weapon of defense in the ugly competi- 
tive game ; “slickness” Gregory had called it with tolerant 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


473 


pity. . . . Behind Abraham’s pedantry and arbitrariness, 
likewise, he had discerned a fine, upright, trustworthy 
man ; once even he had said of him, more serious 
than she had taken it, that he would feel easy with 
her in Abraham’s care if he could not himself take 
care of her. . . . Through association with this man, 
who combined profound human insight with his in- 
tellectuality, she saw her old self now as Abraham 
must have seen her — a creature whose intellect and 
Heart had wanted to branch like a wild plant and had 
recoiled from attempts at pruning. Where Abraham had 
failed to make her understand, Gregory had succeeded; 
but Gregory’s success gave her sympathy with Abraham’s 
attempts. . . . She began to wonder how, with her ma- 
turer understanding, she would now get along with her 
family, to whom her thoughts also began to turn. Was 
her mother doing well in South Africa? Minnie had 
never approved of the venture and was terribly afraid 
her mother might be suffering again. . . . And Beckie — 
and Ida and Jacob — how were they getting on without 
their mother ? One day, lonely and longing, she wrote to 
her sisters. A reply came promptly containing a history 
of the family’s fortunes. Sarah had left for Africa, and 
Jacob, to help maintain the home, which otherwise would 
have had to be broken up, had returned to live with his 
sisters. For some time the arrangement worked well; 
then Jacob bolted. Sick of school-teaching and satisfied 
that in this age of woman’s equality with man his sisters 
could shift for themselves, he had gone off on a trip to 
Europe for a change from the daily grind. The girls 
could not keep up the home and were just deciding to 
store the furniture against their mother’s return (they 
were sure she would return ; and a nice big bill for stor- 


474 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


age she would have to meet!) when Minnie’s letter ar- 
rived. Minnie ought to come back and help keep up the 
home and shoulder her responsibility “for once.” 

Minnie did. And Abraham was convinced that she 
was at last coming to the normal sense of normal people, 
though at the same time a resentful feeling was blown 
into flame that Minnie never could be convinced until the 
bitter end was reached. 


LX 

Beckie and Ida were still the same, squabbling over 
trifles, loving in their crude fashion, agreeable and dis- 
agreeable in their simple way. Curious as to the change 
in Minnie, they often remarked to each other on her 
gravity, her softness and poise, in smiling whispers be- 
hind her back though there was that about her personality 
which in her presence compelled respect and convinced 
them of her sincerity. Outlets for their disrespectfulness 
were confined to healthy discharges upon each other. 

The two younger girls had a natural family affection 
for each other, while for Minnie even Beckie had only a 
tempered love and Ida none at all. They felt constrained 
with her as with a stranger. 

After a while, with closer and more familiar associa- 
tion, they began to suspect her of affectation, resenting 
her new ways as Sarah’s neighbors had resented her 
aloofness. Ida particularly, whose ideal henceforth be- 
came ultra-simplicity of manner, felt contempt for her 
sister for “putting on airs” and in counter-distinction be- 
gan to cultivate an exaggeratedly Yiddish inflection and 
a louder voice, and abstained from the commonest shows 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


47 $ 

of politeness. For a sister to say “thank you,” “if you 
please” was a disgusting affectation. 

Once Minnie called Beckie “dear.” That decided Ida. 
She let loose her pent-up contempt. Thenceforth “pre- 
tender” addressed to Minnie was as frequent and facile 
an epithet on her lips as “pig” addressed, on provocation, 
to Beckie. Had not Minnie now had the balancing 
weight of maturity, quarrels might have ensued. Ida’s 
fire, however, could not feed on Minnie’s silence, and 
her respectful attitude, the next time the two had com- 
munication, would quench the blaze completely. 

The home was lonely. The world was lonely. Minnie 
was grateful for Abraham’s visits to which she grew to 
look forward eagerly. Her deference and gentleness 
rather puzzled him. In spite of a desire to be appreci- 
ative, he had an inner shrinking from this strange Min- 
nie. He, too, in the privacy of his being, smelt affecta- 
tion in her present agreement with his opinions. 
Breathes there the man who hankers after the attain- 
able! 

LXI 

Yetta Grubicha was the chief office clerk of the Para- 
gon Knee Pants Company, which occupied a loft in the 
same building as the firm in which Minnie was em- 
ployed. 

Yetta outwitted her destiny. In one of the Fates’ 
rare moments of unwariness, she slipped from between 
their fingers. One week of machine-operating convinced 
her there was no prestige in it and confirmed her in the 
determination to fight her mother into letting her study 
stenography. 


476 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“You are not even a school graduate,” objected her 
mother. 

“Mind your own business,” quoth Yetta. 

Some secretarial school of light conscience admitted 
her as a pupil and in three months’ time turned her out 
a full-fledged stenographer. But she could not slough 
her inherited strain of commonness as she had cast be- 
hind her the work-shop. It jumped to the light in her 
emphatic clothes, her pretentious friends, and her adora- 
tion of near-classics in music, the drama, and fiction. 

Once, recuperating from an illness, she spent several 
weeks with her employers in the country. Their sister 
was a soft, refined, sweet-mannered person, whose ways 
made such an impression upon Yetta that ever afterwards 
she went about imitative, putting into her voice the oth- 
er’s lingering sweetness of tone and into her eyes the 
same gentle, intimate expression. In the practice of her 
mannerisms she never arrived at unconsciousness. They 
never came quite natural to her. Those who had known 
her before her “conversion” smiled at it, while her par- 
ents scoffed at her for aspiring to “whole ladyship.” It 
was for such as she to remain with tastes befitting her 
station. Their fear was that she would refuse to marry 
any man who was not a doctor or a lawyer, to which class 
of gentlemen, as they understood matters, every “high- 
tone lady” aspired. All they needed, nee! to complete 
their earthly happiness was to have an old maid on their 
hands! As if they did not have worries enough with all 
sorts of family troubles and wrangles and an unruly boy 
who had landed in a reformatory. Yetta resented their 
interference. Quarrels arose in which she discarded her 
veneer, meeting her coarse parents on a level. The 
oftener they cautioned her to “stay in her own back 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


477 


yard,” the fiercer became her defiance and her longing 
and resolution really to get herself a professional man if 
only to spite them. 

She joined a club in contemporary drama to which, 
she had been told, nice girls belonged. Through nice 
girls, she calculated, one was likely to meet nice men. 
Nor did she confine herself for nice girls to the class in 
contemporary drama. She ferreted them out in all the 
walks of life, and spotting Minnie as a nice girl among 
the female employees of the office building who came to 
the women’s room, she made advances to her. Though 
Minnie was at first repelled by this maiden of big bulk 
of bust, dusky skin, and large, coarse features, Yetta’s 
manners were so deceptive that by degrees Minnie, who 
had no feelers out for guile of any sort, was drawn to 
her. The two began to eat lunch and walk home to- 
gether. 

Once Yetta paid Minnie a visit. She met Abraham. 
That one visit increased her devotion to Minnie a thou- 
sandfold ; and when at another visit she met a friend of 
Abraham’s, a Doctor Henry Flegal, her ardor grew so 
intense that it had to expend itself in gifts and treats of 
all sorts. Minnie was reduced to affection for Yetta and 
tears of gratitude. Yetta’s visits increased in number. 

By making Minnie the repository of intimate confes- 
sions she maneuvered herself into her confidence, and 
once she deftly lured Minnie on to admit that she would 
be willing to marry Abraham and was suffering from 
his present indifference. Minnie blushed and trembled 
after the confession. She had not even formulated her 
feelings before. Yetta, like a beckoning finger, had led 
her on to the ripening of the thought in her mind and to 
the admission. When Yetta was gone, she threw herself 


478 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

on her bed and buried her head in the pillow. “Gregory, 
Gregory !” she moaned, while the loneliness and empti- 
ness of her life tore her spirits to the core. “I have noth- 
ing — nobody You said you would feel easy if I 

were in Abraham’s care. He is good — I could atone 
to him for what I made him suffer. What more does 
life hold with you gone? Oh, Gregory! If I were edu- 
cated, had had a decent start, I might devote myself to 
some big thing, something outside myself, but as it is, 
what more can I ask for than the commonplace?” 

She sobbed until her body ached and then lay quietly 
watching a ray of the dying sun playing on the wall. 

LXII 

Among the many convictions at which the Abraham of 
twenty-seven had arrived was the conviction that a man 
of clean morals must marry. He was of the philosophy 
that man is history and it is only natural that history re- 
peat itself. Everybody said so. All the laws pointed that 
way. He took no advantage of the license for promis- 
cuousness granted his sex when the world began. To his 
moral way of thinking what was sauce for the goose 
was sauce for the gander. A man of unchaste morals 
had no right to exact greater perfection of a woman. 
Abraham was a just man. 

On the subject of marriage without love he was of a 
twofold opinion. The sanctifying passion was, of course, 
infinitely preferable, but however much in love a man 
and woman might be, if their temperaments threatened 
incompatability, by far the wiser course for them to pur- 
sue was to remain apart. Progeny were entitled to an 
harmonious parentage. Yet at the thought of entering 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


479 


marriage without love he felt a vague regret, a sadness as 
like an intense emotion as the mist is like the rain. At 
such times, visited by a faint melancholy, he would come 
oftener to see Minnie, under much the same impulse that 
sends the living to visit the graves of the dead. He would 
talk more vivaciously than had been his wont since her 
return to New York and try his best to work up his old 
interest in her. But she was not the same Minnie. She 
was a pleasant, soft-mannered young woman, who now 
fully assented to the doctrine that “public ownership of 
the means of production, that is, the government owner- 
ship of mines, mills, factories and all public utilities, 
would eliminate the exploitation of one human being by 
another and so rid the world of the great evils of the day, 
poverty, child labor, etc. ,, She was now as fully con- 
vinced as he that the Jews should possess a land of their 
own, like all the other nations, and so be freed from soul 
oppression, the better to perpetuate the wonderful quali- 
ties of mind and spirit that kept them, though persecuted 
and scattered, a unit through the ages. And most dis- 
concertingly, she was now assured that every person 
ought to be informed about the sanctuary of his soul, his 
body. Martin’s Human Body ought to be widely read. 
Abstract reasoning and thinking had unfolded in her like 
a butterfly within its cocoon. 

Her agreeableness irritated Abraham much as an ultra- 
excellent quality in a first wife will irritate a husband. 
He would squirm in his chair ; “affectation” would sound 
in his mind. But worst of all, her agreeableness smelled 
like a bait. Abraham, like all men, was not of a mind to 
be caught. 

Although he tried to overcome his increasing indif- 
ference, he grew more and more convinced that Minnie 


480 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


was not for him. . . . But “a man must marry” and 
since the passion that he had felt for Minnie could not 
come to him again for another woman, he would be 
obliged to make a practical match. He would have to 
find a simple, sensible girl, healthy above all, with no non- 
sense about her. His sisters’ friends, to whom he now 
began to pay attention, were nice girls, but none of them 
had qualities that seemed to fuse into a desirable whole. 
He would hold each up for mathematical survey. One 
had good sense and a pleasant manner, but a foolish 
laugh. One had nice manners, a nice laugh and was 
even pretty, but looked anemic, as if she might have a 
nervous breakdown. 

Of all the girls he knew it was in Yetta Grubicha that 
the good qualities outweighed the bad. Her homeliness 
might be a drawback, but upon due cogitation he decided 
that, on the contrary, it might be a virtue. It would make 
her the more devoted to him. He tested her intellectual 
capacity by specific quizzing, and though he found her 
beneath the standard of even the Minnie of old, she was 
always as eager as a child to learn and listened to him as 
to an oracle. It would be rather pleasant, he concluded, 
always to have her by his side to teach. To be sure she 
irritatingly used “seen” for “saw” and “says” for “said.” 
But it was a very minor fault, taken all in all. Experi- 
ence with Minnie had taught that when a man is out on 
the business of wife-hunting, it is the larger things that 
count. Yetta Grubicha had a healthy body which gave 
promise of repeated motherhood without hysteria, and 
she had the second wife’s agreeableness that men always 
appreciate. 

And Yetta, with native shrewdness, divining Abra- 
ham’s state of mind, played upon him at every oppor- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


481 


tunity. Insofar as her obligations to Minnie were con- 
cerned, she took a convenient, clean-cut road to the con- 
clusion that she was not guilty of theft, since Abraham 
was not in love with Minnie. And even if he were, mar- 
riage to-day was a business. Until then her own hori- 
zon had kept uncharitably clear of such “grand chances” 
as Abraham, whereas Minnie’s had not. Minnie was 
likely to have other chances. 

“HI be hung,” was her ultimatum to herself, “if I’ll let 
foolishness stand in my way.” 

To divert Minnie’s suspicion, she pretended that she 
spent a great deal of time with Doctor Henry Flegal and 
was eloquent in his praise. And on the score of Abra- 
ham’s divulging anything she rested easy. Men never 
spoke of their second choice to their first choice. 

Minnie was successfully put on the false scent. With 
the matchmaker’s instinct present in every woman, she 
had dreams of helping her homely but nice friend win 
the idol of her heart, Doctor Flegal, and often puzzled 
the gentleman with rhapsodies in eulogy .of Yetta 
Grubicha. 


LXIII 

One evening Abraham, in a mood for woman, made his 
way to Yetta’s home on the chance of finding her in. 
He walked slowly, as if giving earnest contemplation to 
each step. It was not until he awaited the response to 
his ring of the lower bell that he realized he would be 
disappointed if he did not find Yetta at home. The 
sound of the answering click was a distinct pleasure. 

At the door of the apartment he was met, without his 
having to ring, by Yetta clad in a kirnona of becoming 


482 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


red silk. She had been preparing for bed and had as- 
sumed it was one of the family, who were all out, that 
had rung. 

Gathering her kimono hastily about her uncorseted 
form, she hesitated an instant, then sang out coyly : 

“I’ll run into my room and get dressed ; you go into 
the parlor. I’ll be out in a minute.” 

Her heavy hips quivered as she ran to her bedroom. 
As he reached the parlor, she closed the door separating 
the two rooms. 

Abraham sat idly a few moments, looking from the 
window to the door and back again, and listening to her 
footsteps as she moved between the dresser and the closet. 
In his mind lingered the picture of her large, shaking 
hips. 

Soon she called out with a sensuous softness in her 
voice : 

‘Tm coming soon.” She was wondering excitedly, all 
a-quiver with the triumph, what had brought him. Until 
then he had announced his visits. Though the two were 
already sufficiently familiar to call each other by their 
first names, there was something more deliciously inti- 
mate in this informality. Taking every precaution to 
look her best, she hesitated between two dresses and 
finally chose the one that accentuated the curves of her 
figure. 

Abraham cleared his throat and replied: 

“Don’t hurry.” 

He looked toward the door of the bedroom, fancied 
her partially garbed figure, and colored. To distract his 
mind, he picked up a magazine on the table and began 
to read ; he raised his head every moment at the sound 
of her footsteps to glance toward the door expectantly. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


483 

At last she appeared. Smiling, with her assumed ex- 
pression of warmth and intimacy, she crossed the room 
to shake hands. Abraham rose quickly, flushing. An 
expanse of red, purple and yellow bead embroidery, 
which radiated a warmth, drew his eyes to the bosom of 
her dress. His mind became momentarily clouded and 
his feet a trifle unsteady. He controlled himself, and it 
was not in the least observable that he had undergone 
emotion. 

They shook hands and then seated themselves with 
the room’s length between. Yetta’s heart was pounding. 
And Abraham, though outwardly calm, was ill at ease. 

Yetta said: “I did not expect you. I was thunder- 
struck when I seen you.” 

The “seen” restored Abraham to equanimity. He felt 
the superior at once. It gave him poise. 

"I told you many times to say ‘saw/ ” he said with 
schoolmasterly kindness and the fluttering droop of his 
eyelids. 

Yetta colored and looked appreciative, like a little girl. 
When Abraham tried to teach her, she affected a child- 
like way of paying attention. 

“Saw,” she repeated coyly, dropping her eyes and 
raising them again and thrusting her chin forward as a 
child does when it capitulates. She was conscious of 
pleasing Abraham. 

A moment’s silence followed, during which Abraham’s 
eyes traveled over the beaded expanse. The instant Yetta 
addressed him again, he removed his eyes and turned in 
his chair guiltily. 

“Have you been thinking of me?” she asked, proposing 
to be the leader if need be. 

Abraham smiled self-consciously. Truth to tell, he 


484 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


had not been thinking of her especially. He had been 
thinking rather of her sex and to this he could not very 
well admit. 

“Why, yes,” he replied, still smiling, his voice and man- 
ner betraying discomfort. 

“What were you thinking?” she asked, leaning for- 
ward so that the opening at her throat brought to view 
the part between her breasts. An electric thrill went 
through Abraham. He dropped his eyes, coughed and 
became ultra-dignified. But the exact state of his feel- 
ings were revealed to the wise Yetta by the contraction 
and the moisture of his eyes when he raised them again. 
She moved from one side of her chair to the other, while 
she placed both her hands upon her hips and took a deep 
breath, expanding her chest. 

Abraham watched the movement and frowned, wish- 
ing he were not so conscious of her that evening. He 
disliked himself in such a mood. But it was this very 
mood in the smouldering that had brought him to her 
door. It was the same mood that would have taken an- 
other man to the door of a public woman. 

“I’ve worked awfully hard to-day,” she said, “Pm 
quite tired. I was going to bed. We have evef so many 
orders for a new kind of pants that the firm is manufac- 
turing. They engaged two more salesmen. . . . I’m 
tired,” she said again, stretching her hands forward as 
if to clasp something. 

Though Abraham affected interest, he hardly heard 
what she said. When she stretched her hands forward, 
he had an almost overwhelming desire to jump from his 
seat and meet her in an embrace. 

“Is that so?” he asked merely to say something. 

“And last night I was up late in the contemporary 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


485 

drama class. Oh, we're getting on fine there. We’re 
learning parts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth !’ She waxed 
enthusiastic. 

This really interested Abraham. He had aspirations 
for Yetta, too. Learning appealed to Abraham above 
everything else. 

“Do you expect to become an actress ?” he asked face- 
tiously. 

Yetta thought he was making fun of her and actually 
felt a little hurt. It came to her that the sense of hurt 
was a good emotion to play up, and she met his look in 
a steady gaze lasting a moment, the while bringing tears 
to her eyes. 

“You’re making fun of me !” she cried in a low voice. 

Abraham was stung with regret, which increased as she 
dropped her head into the palms of her hands. Good- 
ness, was she crying? He jumped quickly from his chair, 
and the next instant was by her side. At the same mo- 
ment she raised her eyes to him moist but smiling. 

“I’m not crying!” she said sweetly, shaking her head! 
“Silly thing!” she added, laying her hand on his arm. 

They remained for a moment in that position, he look- 
ing down upon her. Then he moved back to his chair, 
picked it up and brought it close to hers. 

His sudden nearness so overwhelmed Yetta that she 
craved his embrace, whether he meant to propose to her 
or not. From the intensity of her feeling she was silent. 
He, too, was silent. 

Finally he laid his hand in her lap. She raised it and 
land it on the arm of her chair. He was puzzled. It 
reached him hazily that she was as much aquiver as he, 
but this slightly repellant action daunted his assurance. 
Manlike, however, he immediately did the same thing 


4 86 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


over again. This time Yetta raised his hand from her 
lap, but allowed it to rest in her hand. They sat in si- 
lence, each full of emotion. He fondled a ring on her 
finger, a large gilt ring of clumsy make, obviously a 
man’s. 

“Oh, where did you get that?” he asked as though out 
of great curiosity, smiling and raising his clouded eyes 
to hers. She met his glance only for a fraction of a sec- 
ond as she was fearful of a tell-tale expression in her 
own eyes. 

“A gentleman friend of mine gave it to me,” she said. 

He did not hear her. He was looking at her hand, a 
shapely, fleshy hand, soft and warm. He raised it to his 
lips and kissed it. With that the passion eating in his 
blood surged up. He leaned over. In the movement his 
hand came in contact with the softness of her bulk of 
bust. He was stunned. He dropped his head upon her 
bosom, called her peevishly, pleadingly, “Dear,” as if in 
advance to silence protest, and then gently brought her 
head down to meet his. She led in a passionate kiss. 
They remained in silent embrace. 

She stroked his scanty hair. “Why didn’t you tell me 
sooner ?” she cooed, bringing the soft, intimate expression 
into her voice and eyes as she looked down upon him, 
bending at the same time to kiss his forehead. The act 
stirred a momentary feeling of sanctity in Abraham’s 
breast. It was a mother act. He warmed to the mother 
in Yetta. 

“Why not?” crossed his mind with melancholy resig- 
nation. He was not in love with Yetta. He knew it even 
in this moment of passion ; but she made promise of such 
a satisfactory mate! He was sure that the girl was in 
love wih him. He closed his eyes. A shadowy longing 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


48 7 

for Minnie in Yetta’s stead crossed his heart. He 
sighed. His life was not to he one of romance. . . . 
Yetta, seeing the fleeting pain on his face, bent down 
and kissed his lips with passion. All the world swept 
out of existence for Abraham. Her breast rested upon 
his chest. He caught her passionately in his arms and 
pressed her to him with all the recklessness of star- 
vation. 

LX IV 

In South Africa Leopold Pollack met with a lukewarm 
reception, but before he had time to warn Sarah, she 
packed up and went to join him. In his eagerness to 
escape possible dependence in America he had partially 
blinded himself to the fact that human nature is the 
same the world over and dependence in South Africa is 
as little sweet as elsewhere. Leopold’s relatives, after 
their first silent amazement, began to talk among them- 
selves. What could the two have thought by coming such 
a distance to plant themselves sans sufficient funds among 
people who until then had been happy? Their unfriend- 
liness, especially after Sarah’s arrival, grieved Leopold 
so that he began to ail. Sarah was alarmed and looked 
into a black future, yet, with her eternal love of life, she 
defied facts again. 

“What,” she cried to Leopold when a year had gone 
by, “are you grieving so for? God mine! So we’ll tell 
them to go to the devil and return to America. We have 
enough for traveling expenses, and when we get back 
something will turn up. If you make yourself sick what 
will it avail us ?” 

She cheered and petted him, and at times even worked 


488 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


herself up into hopefulness. Only in the darkness of the 
night would the actuality stare her in the face like a 
grinning skeleton. She would curl up in a knot, the goose 
flesh would stand out on her skin, and her tongue and 
lips would grow dry. What would she and Leopold go 
back to in America? In the daytime, however, she kept 
up a show of optimism. But Leopold was not without 
eyes for her deepening sallowness and loss of flesh. 

In the end her hopes prevailed, and they set sail for 
New York. Though it was tacitly understood between 
them that they were not to go to the children, they made 
no plans for another home, each too tight with worry 
for words ; and when the dock in New York was reached 
they exchanged glances of terrified helplessness. Sarah, 
frenzied by the sight of Leopold’s haggard face, cried 
involuntarily : 

“I know a nice two-room house on Henry Street. Let 
us go there. There always used to be rooms. We’ll take 
two rooms.” 

Leopold bowed his head. Like two pilgrims they 
walked silently to the Henry Street tenement of Sarah’s 
past. There were two rooms vacant on the ground floor. 

As Sarah stood with Leopold and the janitress looking 
about the melancholy premises, a ton weight rested on her 
soul. She pressed the top of her head with one hand 
and bit her upper lip to hide its quivering. When Leo- 
pold paid a deposit a groan almost escaped her. 

When they were alone, assuming a calm demeanor, she 
said : “There must be a second-hand furniture shop in the 
neighborhood ; let’s go out and buy a few things.” 

? T’ll go alone, you stay here and rest,” he said, and 
left. 

Sarah turned aimlessly about the empty room, stood a 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


489 


moment clenching her fists, then she walked with shuf- 
fling steps to a barred window opening upon the tiny 
yard. Blurred visions of Foxy, Minnie, Abie, Bubbele, 
and Mrs. Ratkin passed through her numbed mind. A 
shadow of Elias ascended through a rift in the sky. It 
went up, up, up — and then was closed out of sight. 
Sarah’s eyes dropped upon the offal litter in the yard. 
She clenched her fists tighter and moved hastily to the 
middle of the room. Her gray hair, loosely pinned, tum- 
bled over her shoulders. She turned her face upward 
between lifted shoulders and threw out her hands, palms 
open, as if challenging the Unknown to explain her fate. 
A groaning figure with head bowed in hands crouched 
on the dirty, dust-laden floor. 

LXV 

Sarah, and not Leopold, succumbed to illness. In less 
than a month’s time she was so reduced that she had to 
spend many hours on the lounge, but with her usua4 
stoicism she denied the necessity for summoning a doc- 
tor, assuring Leopold each day that she would be well 
by the morrow. 

“Don’t you think,” Leopold suggested once when 
Sarah looked particularly ill, “that since you are sick we 
ought to let the children know we are here?” Before 
putting the question, he had considered long and seri- 
ously. 

“No, no!” cried Sarah passionately. It had become a 
mania with her to keep their return a secret from every- 
one, especially her children. They must not know of her 
reduced circumstances. And she was too worn to give 
logical thought to what might be the end of it all. 


490 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Leopold went to work daily in a cigarette factory in 
much the same capacity as Elias, though the shop was 
spacious and modern. On his return home evenings he 
would find a sick wife and as sick a supper awaiting 
him. 

And so the days passed, seemingly leading nowhere. 
LX VI 

Two Sundays went by without a visit from Abraham. 
Minnie thought he might not be well, but refrained from 
writing him for fear of appearing indelicate. The next 
Sunday a full hour went in the vain expectation that each 
masculine figure on the street would prove to be Abra- 
ham. 

The next day at lunch Minnie deliberately asked Yetta 
if she knew whether Abraham was well. Yetta dropped 
her lids. She was sure he was well ; Doctor Flegal, whom 
she had seen several times, had said nothing of his being 
Ml. Minnie was relieved. She had not noticed that Yetta 
spoke too eagerly. 

The rest of the week Minnie went about wondering 
why it was that now when she was fitted to be Abraham’s 
helpmate, he should be indifferent. “Fate delights in 
mean tricks,” she said to herself in a dawning perception 
of life’s ironies. 

The fourth Sunday her sisters exchanged silent smiles 
over the persistent figure at the window, and shrugged 
their shoulders because of Minnie’s lack of pride. When 
a man turns cold, it was their belief, a woman should 
congeal. Toward evening Minnie retired to her room. 
When she reappeared, her eyes were red-rimmed. She 
was lonely, her heart was heavy. She wanted something 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


491 


to live for, somebody to mean something to her, some- 
body to mean something to. Life was barren, empty. 
“Gregory, oh, Gregory!” she cried within herself. 

After one more long vigil by the window on the fol- 
lowing Sunday, her heart was convulsed with forebod- 
ings. “Can it be that Abraham is in love with someone 
else?” 

He had written: “You may steal, kill, make yourself 
detestable in my eyes, I will love you.” She felt a mo- 
ment’s peace. 

“Then why has he stayed away so long? He never did 
it before.” A dark shadow was on her heart. 

“Wait until you get well and then we will talk the 
whole thing over,” he had said on the New Jersey hill. 

“He is honorable ; he would not go back on his word.” 

The next morning she rose in a stupor from a torment 
of nightmares. On her way to work she decided she 
would take Yetta into her confidence. 

As she entered the office the telephone bell rang. She 
took the receiver off the hook. 

“Is that you, Minnie?” came Yetta’s voice. 

“Yes.” 

“Well, I simply couldn’t wait till lunch to tell you a 
perfectly wonderful piece of news.” 

A dramatic pause, during which Minnie’s intuitions 
leapt to the truth. 

Time for dramatic suspense to be up, came the an- 
nouncement. 

“Abraham Ratkin and I are going to be married.” 

A sickening quiver rent Minnie. She was paralyzed. 
In a daze, she hung up the receiver and stood stark. Her 
hand went quickly to her throat, feeling its outline. 
Then a sort of panting indignation pervaded her. In a 


492 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


moment others came into the office and she braced her- 
self and set to work. ... It was impossible to accom- 
plish a thing. “She deceived me, she deliberately falsi- 
fied !” The inconceivable effrontery thrust itself in the 
way of every other thought. . . . 

Minnie’s ashen face was plea sufficient for her em- 
ployer to let her off early in the morning. 

At home the thoughts throbbed on and on, and a flood 
of driving emotions racked her. She was thrust out, 
and the stranger Yetta Grubicha occupied her place with 
Abie of her childhood days ! . . . She saw herself mak- 
ing confidences to a trusted friend, then saw the same 
friend a traitor. When she saw the one she could not 
believe in the other. She was jerked sickeningly by al- 
ternate belief and disbelief. It was a revelation of mean- 
ness and ugliness that did not reveal but blinded and 
stunned and sickened. And that Abraham should have 
failed to adhere to his promise to talk it all over when 
she got well, and love her even if she stole, killed or 
made herself detestable in his eyes seemed incredible. 
She felt herself in a world of unreal beings. 

Finally, in a revulsion from this mood, her mind 
groped its way upward out of the slime. She felt herself 
lifted in Gregory’s arms to his heaven. She was not 
meant for Abraham. She belonged to Gregory’s memory. 
It was for her to live a life outside herself. Though she 
was unfitted for a part in the big things to be done in the 
world, she could live big in spirit, step aside, as it were, 
and let him who would rush, hustle, bustle over the ruin 
of others to their success. She was meant to live within ; 
to dream of what might have been and worship what had 
been. Sighing, with a dull, corroding ache in her heart, 
she rose and wrote Yetta asking her not to misconstrue 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


493 


her odd behavior at the telephone. “I wish you happi- 
ness,” she ended, “and though for me just now it is as if 
the light of the world has gone out, I am sure I will soon 
be myself again.” 

But she was not convinced of it. Something within 
was dead — no, dying — and it raised a piercing, pleading 
cry : “Abraham, oh, Abraham, now when I long to make 
you happy !” 


LXVII 

Minnie’s letter put Yetta, against her practical sense, 
through a period of pious reflection. She was certain 
that even though Minnie had “played up,” she held a 
pretty caustic opinion of her in reserve. Yetta would 
have preferred attack. The tables of baseness, treachery, 
cruelty, could then have been turned upon Minnie, while 
Yetta could have lashed herself into a fine frenzy of 
anger to nullify her sense of guilt. As it was, she had 
a superstitious dread of punishment in some form or 
other; she trod timidly as if to hide from the watchful 
eyes of the Fates. 

When Abraham came in the evening, she rose from 
her seat at the window with a start as if awakened from 
a trance. She went toward him languidly, kissed him 
passionately on the lips and let the tears gather in her 
eyes. 

“What’s the matter?” Abraham asked at once in con- 
cern. She turned her head away, began a sigh and as if 
becoming conscious of it cut it short. She moved lan- 
guidly toward the window. “What is it, dear?” he re- 
peated, in alarm, following her. Something must be very 
wrong, he believed in his sincerity, if Yetta was so dis- 


494 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


tressed. She sank into her chair and turned her head 
to the window. He stood beside her while removing 
his hat and coat. 

“I’ll take them,” she said languidly, holding her hand 
out gracefully for his garments and half rising in readi- 
ness for service. 

He held her off with "I'll do it myself,” and laid the 
things down on a chair; then he seated himself beside her, 
bent forward, took her hand, and insisted, this time im- 
peratively, upon knowing what was the trouble. 

Yetta turned liquid eyes upon him pleadingly. He 
inferred she did not wish to be questioned and so sat si- 
lently holding her hand. She turned her eyes away again. 
With the cunning that in vulgar yet aspiring natures re- 
places genuineness, she assumed all the outer manifesta- 
tions of an inward struggle. She sighed and quivered 
and palpitated. 

Abraham’s heart was genuinely wrung. 

“What is it? Please tell me, I beg you,” he pleaded. 

She dropped her head on his shoulder. He took her in 
his arms. She broke into gentle weeping, by degrees 
working herself up into real unhappiness. 

“I am so miserable !” 

“Miserable?” Abraham cried. It was a ruthless pluck 
at his man’s pride. He thought somehow he was the 
cause. Divining his suspicion she hastened to allay it. 

“I had a dreadful letter from Minnie.” 

He bit his lips. The mention of Minnie’s name cast a 
blight. He was irritated. Yetta nestled her head more 
lovingly on his shoulder. She languished and she sighed 
according to all the rules of contemporary drama. And 
the more marked Yetta’s distress, the more Abraham 
was upset and the angrier he grew at Minnie. He sup- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


495 


posed her letter had been offensive and abusive. Dis- 
gust with the Minnie he had been deceived in mounted 
by rapid degrees. 

“Don’t take it so hard,” he coaxed, his whole body quiv- 
ering. 

In time Yetta’s emotion subsided, and it was possible 
to hold smooth converse. 

Abraham asked to see the letter. Yetta had destroyed 
it. Just as well, Abraham concluded. He told Yetta she 
should not reply, nor, for that matter, should either of 
them have anything more to do with Minnie. With the 
inexorableness with which a surgeon performs an am- 
putation, they should remove Minnie from their lives so 
as to leave their matrimonial platform clear of all en- 
cumbrances. 

“You know best, dear,” Yetta acceded, cuddling up to 
him. 

A prayer of gratitude went up from Abraham’s heart. 
This woman that God had given him was so amenable, 
so gentle, so good. 


LX VII I 

Though Sarah was merciless with herself in endeavor- 
ing to overcome her weakness, her spirit was unable to 
buoy up her body. Every day it came harder to her to 
go through with her meager household tasks. Yet she 
made no moan, bowing her head like a horse in a storm. 

Only her mind went on tirelessly. 

“Is my life coming to an end? What is life? Who 
has the say over it? Surely not the individual. Where 


496 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


does it lead to? Is it meant as a game or a lesson or a 
joke? ... I have toiled with my very marrow up a very 
mountain to be rid of poverty ; with my blood I watered 
the ground for my children to grow in more easily than 
I, and now, through no neglect of mine or my children’s, 
I am ruthlessly plucked and returned to the rotten soil 
of poverty to decay. I am no longer fit to make a strug- 
gle. Whoever the evil perpetrator of my fate is, he has 
won. Where is the justice? Whose is the guilt? I am 
broken, wholly broken. And so is Leopold. And how 
much more than a hair’s breadth divides my children 
from my very fate !” 

Her children lived in her as mere memories. She 
mourned as though they could never be restored to her. 
Time and again she worried with a new sort of worry, a 
worry bereft of all poignancy and yet deep as her being, 
whether they had been comfortable while she was in 
South Africa. She had learned from Beckie and Ida that 
Minnie had come home to live, and her conscience smote 
her. She scourged herself for having misjudged the girl, 
and looked back upon her period of violent indignation 
as though it had been a spell of insanity. She could 
hardly believe she had ever been capable of it. “She 
was sick ; I was concerned only about myself. I’ve been 
a bad mother, a bad mother.” She wrung her yellowish 
hands in abject desolation, and felt herself a stranger to 
the old Sarah. The new Sarah knew no grudges, no 
malice. Recollections of the children each in turn as 
little ones with their individual wiles and pranks would 
contract her heart with pain. Now Minnie was refusing 
to go steal a band from Mira; now she was helping to 
pluck chickens ; now she was doing washing, scrubbing 
floors, tying Bubbele’s shoe laces. “She was a golden 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


497 

child. God grant her better luck than her mother has 
had,” Sarah would moan to herself as, shuddering, she 
would look about the two grimy rooms that everywhere 
smelt of decay — of the end of all. 

* * * * * * 

Minnie, for all her resignation and for all that she had 
written to Yetta, went about with the peculiar feeling 
that the inevitable would somehow be forestalled. The 
more she thought of it the more incredible it seemed that 
Abraham who had loved her so should so unceremoni- 
ously have discarded her for one as different from her- 
self as Yetta Grubicha. Every day she expected a letter 
which would eradicate the whole affair as a misunder- 
standing. But the letter never came, and Minnie began 
to feel a peculiar shrinking from life, an unwholesome- 
ness about life, as if it were ill with a malignant disease. 

One day coming down the lobby of the office building 
Minnie saw Yetta and Abraham standing at the entrance 
door talking. Yetta’s eyes met hers. Turning color, 
Yetta quickly lowered her lids and floundered in the con- 
versation. Abraham glanced into the lobby. His heart 
leapt at the sight of Minnie. By a gigantic effort, he 
continued conversation with his bride, whose heart, like 
his own, he knew, palpitated entirely out of keeping with 
their cold-blooded resolution to lop this disturber from 
their lives. 

Minnie hesitated for a fraction of a second before 
passing them, uncertain that she rightly discerned their 
wish to ignore her. But there was no mistaking their 
intention. Choked with grief and outrage she fairly 
stumbled out on to the street. Out of their sight she 
broke into a run and ran and ran until suddenly she 


498 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


found herself lunging into someone. The conventional 
“Beg pardon” was on her lips when she felt a restraining 
touch on her arm. 

It was Leopold Pollack. 


LXIX 

Leopold was also returning from work and walking 
hurriedly with lowered head, worried by thoughts of 
Sarah, whom he had left in the morning feeling partic- 
ularly sick. He had made up his mind that if on his re- 
turn he found her no better, he would summon a doctor 
and notify the children. “Since I am working,” he 
argued with himself, “and, thank God, making enough 
for the little we need, why should we keep our presence 
a secret? Nonsense!” 

Minnie and Leopold stood a moment speechless. 

“Is mama back, too?” she finally asked, her face pal- 
lid. 

“Yes, dear.” There was a catch in Leopold’s voice and 
the tenderness that comes from exhaustion. “She is 
sick — your mother is ” he ended in a quiver. 

A dreadful surmise leapt to Minnie’s mind; that her 
mother might be dying, and in the Helina Heimath. Her 
throat felt strangled. The words came thickly, with a 
prodigious effort. 

“Where — where is she?” 

Sarah had not told Leopold that their living in the 
Henry Street tenement was a repetition of history, and 
he could not account for Minnie’s stare as he mentioned 
the street and number. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


499 

“Mama back on Henry Street?” Her eyes looked 
wild. “Take me to her,” she added hoarsely. 

Sarah was asleep on a broken lounge which Leopold 
had bought in the second-hand basement furniture shop 
for ninety-five cents. Her face was yellow and lined. 

Minnie and Leopold walked softly over and stood by 
her side. A mad desire to shout at the Fates, at heaven 
and God, to spit in the face of all life almost suffocated 
Minnie. 

“She looks worse than when I left her this morning,” 
Leopold whispered. 

Minnie turned abruptly away and staggered over to the 
window. 

She was a little girl again with Foxy tugging at her 
skirts ; Abie assailed her with “Fights.” Her thumb was 
in her mouth. From the top-floor window Sarah called 
“Minnie !” She was back again in the present with a 
broken heart and silent sobs rending her being. 

Sarah stirred on the broken lounge. She opened her 
eyes and smiled pathetically and apologetically up at 
Leopold. 

“Are you home already?” she asked in a weak voice. 
At the same instant she recognized Minnie and turning 
even yellower tried to raise herself. 

“I walked right into Minnie, Sarah,” Leopold explained 
hastily. 

Minnie rushed to her mother and, raising her to a sit- 
ting posture in her arms, dropped down beside her on 
the edge of the lounge. Sarah, dazed, could not say a 
word. Leopold turned away. Sarah began to weep. 
Minnie lowered her head on her mother’s shoulder and 
also wept. 


500 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


“Minnie, Minnele!” with a shaky hand Sarah stroked 
the girl’s hair. 

“Mama, mama dear !” 

Suddenly Sarah grew limp in Minnie’s arms. 

“Mama!” Minnie shrieked. 

No answer. 

An agonized glance passed between Leopold and Min- 
nie. Leopold dashed out for a doctor. 

The room was dark. In a frenzy Minnie stumbled 
about for the matches. Lighting one, she applied it to 
the gas jet, but no flame came. The quarter meter had 
run low late in the day and Sarah had not had the energy 
to go out and convert loose change into the one coin. 
Swiftly remembering the character of the tenement’s gas 
service, Minnie dug into her purse, and jumped up on 
a chair to reach the slot. 

“Don’t you DARE!” came from Sarah, who had re- 
vived and whose eyes had been following her daughter. 

Minnie’s hand jerked and the coin fell to the floor. 
She flew to Sarah and sank down on her knees beside 
her. 

“Mama, mama dear.” 

Sarah, exhausted, sank deeper into the lounge. 

Minnie stroked her hair. Regretting her impulsive 
show of indignation, Sarah took the girl’s dank hand in 
hers and fumbled with it clumsily. 

“No, no!” she muttered and paused. “No, it’s not 
for you to give me.” She paused again. “I was a bad 
mother to you.” She seemed to be speaking to herself. 
She left off and turned her head to the wall and dropped 
Minnie’s hand. In a moment she felt again for the hand ; 
she tightened and loosened her hold spasmodically. In a 
voice not like her own, in a husky, low voice, with a 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


50i 

quaver as from old age, she brought out : “You have more 
character in one of your little fingers than ” 

Leopold and the doctor came in. 

LXX 

The three girls sat up until midnight discussing their 
mother and Leopold. 

“They certainly should not have squandered all that 
money at their time of life. It took a fortune to go to 
South Africa,” quoth Ida. 

“But I think it was because they were so afraid of 
growing dependent,” said Minnie. 

“And what about now?” demanded Ida, impatient of 
Minnie’s reasoning. 

“They didn’t foresee this.” 

“Oh, stop arguing,” broke in Beckie. “What differ- 
ence does it make how it happened? Mama’s sick, and 
we ought to make her come home. The idea of going to 
Henry Street to live!” 

All out of patience, Ida raised her voice. “But she 
won’t come home.” 

Minnie had coaxed Sarah and Leopold to return 
with her that very night. Leopold, for Sarah’s sake, was 
ready to do so. Sarah, however, persistently declared 
that now that the doctor had seen her and prescribed she 
'would soon be well and it would be time enough then 
to make plans. 

Ida resented this sudden disturbance of her peace. 
Now that she might have used her earnings wholly for 
herself and breathed freely after the many years of work 
and responsibility, this had to come! She sulked within 
herself that forever since childhood it had been necessary 


502 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


to make one sacrifice or another for this one or that one 
of the family. During the summer, before Minnie had 
come home, Beckie had lost her position, and she had 
wanted Ida to forego her vacation so as to reduce her 
own living expenses, because if Ida went away, Ida’s 
weekly contribution would not be forthcoming. “As if,” 
Ida had thought petulantly, “one is not entitled to live 
for oneself ! . . Yet she was concerned about her 
mother. The great nuisance, however, lay in the fact that 
concern was not sufficient. 

“I suppose if she won’t come home, we’ll each have to 
chip in something every week until she gets better.” Ida 
sighed resignedly. 

Looking into space, Minnie said : “I’m afraid she 
won’t take money and she won’t come home either.” She 
had the gas meter incident in mind. 

Minnie’s notions were too much for Ida. “So zvhat 
will she do?” she exploded, reddening to her temples. 

Minnie shrugged her shoulders. 

3|c $ si« * :jc sfc 

When the three girls reached the Henry Street rooms 
in the morning, they found Leopold at home ministering 
to Sarah, in the hope that if he gave himself up to her 
for the full day and carried out the doctor’s orders punc- 
tiliously, an immediate cure might be effected. 

Warmer than her greeting of the two people was Ida’s 
show of contempt for the freakishness which had taken 
them again to the pesty East Side. “Such an idea!” she 
burst out immediately. She might have restrained her- 
self if Sarah had made the miserable picture that Min- 
nie had prepared her for. But Sarah, reacting to her 
pleasure in Leopold’s presence and excited by the chil- 
dren’s appearance, was flushed and smiling and looked 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


503 


rather well. She cowered imperceptibly at Ida’s harsh 
words. With the supersensitiveness of the invalid, her 
heart began to pound and her temples to throb. With a 
suppressed gasp, she begged Ida : “Childie, be friendly to 
your mother,” and a sob escaped her. Ida was silenced 
by a warning look from the other three. 

To divert Sarah’s attention, Leopold launched upon 
their South African experiences. While he spoke, Ida’s 
mind was torn between pity and defiance. ‘T certainly 
won’t mention coming home to them now. As if I didn’t 
mean what I said for their own good ! When they have 
a real home to go to, they turn to this rotten hole! Now 
they can come if they want to, and if they don’t is nisht 
gefiddelt so far as I’m concerned.” 

When Leopold had finished, Ida rose to go. “I’m an 
hour late already for work,” she said, seeing her mother’s 
disappointment. 

The three girls exchanged looks. Ida’s said : “I won’t.” 
Beckie’s said to Minnie : “You do.” Minnie’s said : “All 
right.” She walked to her mother and leaning over she 
said gently : “Ma, we’ll get a carriage and take you home. 
You can’t stay here. Please, ma.” 

Sarah flushed. She was annoyed at the tumultuous 
beating of her own heart. She waved her hand depre- 
catingly. “I’ll be well soon and make money and furnish 
a home and then invite you to my home.” It was obvious 
that there was no use arguing with her. She was a rock 
of determination. 

Ida turned away disgusted. Beckie felt tearful. Min- 
nie, too, felt tearful. Leopold hung his head. 

When Ida was going out, Sarah begged the other two 
not to let themselves be detained either : they might come 
again in the evening if they cared to ; she would be glad 


5°4 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


to see them. When Minnie and Beckie kissed her, she 
wiped away tears from her eyes. Ida, touched, returned 
from the door and also kissed her mother. 

An hour later Sarah lapsed into unconsciousness. Leo- 
pold rushed out to summon the doctor. Soon afterward 
Sarah was no more. 


LXXI 

Bad news travels fast and far. 

Almost simultaneously there flocked to the house of 
death all the relatives Sarah had ever had in days happy 
and unhappy. And Mira Cohen, too, proprietress of the 
Cohen Millinery Bargain House, her hair Marcel-waved, 
bustled in breathless with excitement. She wrung her 
hands. She charged Leopold Pollack: 

“Why, why didn’t you let me know ? Woe is me, why 
didn’t you let some of us know? Wouldn’t I have helped 
you? Why are we human beings if not to help one an- 
other ?” 

Was it sincere, Minnie wondered, or was it hypocrisy, 
or the dictation of imbecile minds and shallow hearts? 
. . . What had Ida’s wailing and moaning in common 
with her hard-hearted attitude before Sarah’s death? 
Minnie looked at her, recalling, with the utter amazement 
she had felt at the time, the scene when Ida had learned 
of her mother’s death. This had been in the vestibule 
of the Henry Street tenement; Ida had run out on the 
street as in a fit of madness ; had flung away her purse, 
and tom her hat from her head, crying: “Mama, oh, my 
mama !” 

“Ida, Ida, dear, control yourself,” Minnie had begged. 

“Oh, don’t bother me. Your fancy words make me 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


505 

sick. 1 want to cry for my mother. If you don’t want to 
cry for yours, don’t !” 

Minnie stared at the mourners and shrugged in the 
utter incomprehension with which duplicity inspires the 
straightforward. Frequently her eyes traveled to where 
her mother lay, the humble coffin covered with a black 
cloth, the lighted candles at the head. 

“What an end! What an end!” she mourned, feeling 
that something within her had also died. 

LXXII 

For several months Minnie and Beckie had their time 
taken up by Ida, who succumbed to a nervous breakdown. 
Minnie took her to the hill in New Jersey where she 
had recuperated from this same of the many of her past 
blessings. Though Minnie pointed to herself as a living 
example of the disease overcome, Ida was certain that 
in her case there would be no cure. Minnie might have 
had a nervous breakdown, but it had not been like hers. 
In time she recovered and went back to work. 

Then came some joy. Beckie, sweet and pretty, was 
wooed, was married, and went to another city to live. 

Ida and Minnie decided to go their separate ways, 
one of their reasons being that it was impossible for the 
two of them alone to maintain the home. Ida took a 
room at the Young Ladies’ Lodge. Minnie, averse to a 
repetition of any past experiences, chose a home from out 
of the newspaper columns of “Boarders Wanted.” 

LXXII I 

The time was about eight o’clock in the evening, the 
place was the skylight room of a first-class boarding- 


5°6 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


house kept by a refined Southern lady in reduced circum- 
stances who condescended to take in a few paying guests. 
Minnie Mendel was sitting perched on the top rung of a 
slim ladder that led up to a glass dome opening on the 
roof. Smoke spouting up hurriedly from a nearby chim- 
ney as if anxious to escape confinement tumbled in a mass 
mingling with the grayness of the night. 

“It’s funny to have to climb a ladder for a whiff of 
air — a funny place to live in, a skylight room — a funny 
life,” Minnie mused, an odd mixture of smile and sigh 
playing in her heart. 

The time had passed quietly. Her poignant grief at 
her mother’s death had settled into an even sorrow. And 
Abraham’s marriage had sunk below a misty horizon. 
Now there was just loneliness. And the world seemed 
to hold no balm for all the bruises of the past. Life be- 
came again a round of work, eat, sleep, with here and 
there a snatch of gladness, in the form of a cheerful let- 
ter from Beckie, a talk with a friend, a bit of music, a 
play. But in the main it was empty, for the spirit craved 
big things and was fettered by lack of training and op- 
portunity. Bitterness stirred in her soul as she sat 
cogitative on the ladder. She tried to reason it away 
by telling herself she was an infinitesimal part of a 
gigantic whole. “But then I am a part,” she argued 
on the side of bitterness. “Without me there is no 
whole. No human being must be disregarded as if he 
were a mistake. . . .” She looked up and watched the 
gray clouds sail by. Slowly forward they were moving, 
sure as could be — mama, papa, Foxy — Minnie wiped tears 
from her eyes. “It’s been a terrific struggle. Mama 
climbed about as high as this ladder and they would not 
even let her stay there.” In the wake of her grief over 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


507 


her mother swept a horrible fear. “I am afraid of life, 
I'm not feeling a bit well. My heart pounds — pounds — 
pounds all the time. I don’t sleep — I don’t feel well. If 
I break down, then what?” She shuddered. That way 
lurked horror. Up in the clouds a rift was made; two 
brown eyes looked into hers. “Slick — slick — oh, yes, I 
should have been slick. I am afraid of life, of its ter- 
ribly sharp edges. I should have married money and 
made the edges dull for myself. There was Morris Cap- 
lan — John Maloney. All the girls who are afraid of the 
sharp edges do it ; you see them on Seventh Avenue, on 
Broadway, on Fifth Avenue. They are afraid of the 
sharp edges. I am just as afraid, only I am not as slick. 
What if the wedding march does toll the knell of a soul? 
To live with a soul in a skylight room — lovely quarters 
for a soul — a place to thrive in surely.” She wiped away 
tears. From somewhere in her being rose the thought: 
“A better way for all maybe has miscarried : who knows, 
perhaps it will be restored to us some day by the Mes- 
siah — papa’s Messiah.” She smiled and wiped tears 
away, and then descended from the ladder because her 
back ached. 

The dismalness of the tiny room lit by a puny gas jet 
was too well attuned to her melancholy ; she put on her 
hat and went out. 

She walked slowly toward Fifth Avenue, which was 
not far from her boarding-house. At one corner the 
traffic was having the right-of-way. She waited. 

A fat gentleman had walked as fast as he could behind 
her. When she stopped he had a chance to make sure of 
the correctness of his guess. 

“Well, Miss Mendel ! I thought to myself ‘that’s she,’ 
but I wasn’t sure.” Mr. Maloney seemed to have fed 


5o8 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


well during the years ; his girth was monumental, the tip 
of his nose red and shiny, his eyes murky, his lids puffy, 
and his cheeks bloated. . . All of which made no differ- 
ence to Minnie. . . His voice was like an echo of the- 
past that had held laughter and fun-making. 

“Mr. Maloney !” 

She shook his hand warmly. He pressed so hard that 
she cried out. An old trick of his, and an old way of 
hers. “Well, I see yer after objecting to the same things 
yet.” It was on the tip of Mr. Maloney’s Irish tongue 
to ask whether she also still objected to “fellers” like him. 

“Are ye after losing anybody ?” he asked instead. She 
was dressed in black. 

“Yes, I’ve lost my mother.” She dropped her eyes. 
“But I’ve been out of mourning a long time.” How could 
she tell Mr. Maloney that she could not live in a cheap 
boarding-house with its smells and noises and atrocious 
food and boresome company, and that the skylight room 
of a first-class house took so much of her salary that no 
margin was left for clothes; and though she hated the 
sight of black she brushed and furbished up her garments 
to last an eternity? The consciousness, however, that in 
spite of her old mourning she did not look dowdy helped 
her meet Mr. Maloney’s eyes squarely. 

“That’s too bad,” he said earnestly and took note that 
sTe looked pinched and that lines of age were visible 
around her nostrils and the corners of her mouth, and 
she was not so pretty any more. The mirthful twinkle 
in her great gray eyes had been much more becoming 
than this wise stare. He gave a little cluck and tried to 
suppress a bit of satisfaction that she was apparently not 
prosperous. 

“Married ?” he asked. 


SARAH'S DAUGHTER 


509 


“No” 

Another triumph. 

“Are you?” 

His “no” cast a ray of gladness on Minnie’s heart. 
She was ashamed of it. 

“Are ye bound for any place in particular?” 

“No, I live near here and am just out for a walk.” 

“How would ye like to take in a movie ? Fm free, too. 

Let’s go down to Forty-sec Here — there ” He 

hailed a taxi and hustled Minnie in before she had time 
to accept or reject his invitation. It was his purpose in 
thus hailing the taxi to remind Minnie of the opportunity 
for well-being she had spurned. His object lesson was 
successful. She might now, it crossed her mind, be roll- 
ing in padded cars along Fifth Avenue. She felt a vague 
regret coupled with a bitterness as if life were a cruel 
schoolmaster who knew no bounds in its chastisement for 
disobedience. 

“How’s that feller, that high-brow feller of yers?” he 
asked when they were settled in the car. 

“Mr. Ratkin ? Oh, he’s married.” Flushing, she tried 
to evade his eyes. 

What was the matter with the girl? She didn’t seem 
able to smile. Been having a hell of a time of it — any- 
body could see that. Mr. Maloney could somehow not 
feel sorry. 

“Where you working?” 

“In a book house.” 

“Making lots of money?” 

She smiled a wistful, tired smile that went straight 
to Mr. Maloney’s heart through the layers of his bulging 
flesh, for she looked pretty again at that moment. 

He himself had been lonely. There had been no one 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


5io 

to make use of all the thousands piling up in his name. 
And even a suite of rooms in a fine family hotel palls on 
one's spirits. The sufferings of the heart do hot differ 
much, no matter in what heart they are lodged. 

“How comes it yer not married? Ye were so popular 
like — sort ” 

“How comes it you’re not?” She interrupted him for 
refuge from her embarrassment. She smiled and flushed. 
The thought that she was already an old maid, that the 
time had come when people regarded her as an old maid, 
as an unattractive, undesirable female, flung through her 
mind and stung her to the quick. She felt ashamed as if 
she were guilty of defilement. Her soul reaching out 
like the drowning man for the straw caught on to a ray 
of hope — that Mr. Maloney might ask her to marry him. 
“How glad I would be!” her heart cried; and while the 
finer instinct that in previous years had told her that 
love was the basis of marriage raised its voice even now, 
her instinct for life submerged it. “Why not? Every- 
body does it!” She grew angry with herself somehow 
for standing in her own way. 

As if Mr. Maloney divined her thoughts, he laiT his 
hand on hers. Her heart began to beat fast. Though 
the contact was distasteful, she allowed his hand to rest 
there. “I'm NOT going to be a freak any longer. I’m 

going to be slick. They all do it — slick — Gregory ” 

Her heart laughed a sardonic laugh as she smiled en- 
couragement upon Mr. Maloney. 

Four hours later they were seated in a private dining- 
room of a hotel. They had been to a motion-picture thea- 
ter. He had held her hand all through the performance. 
Aha, she was attainable, was the conclusion John Maloney 
had come to after very little thinking. Her price had 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


5 “ 

come down. He was a winner. . . . But he was an old 
bachelor, with idiosyncrasies, fixed habits, hard to get 
along with, and he really didn’t care to marry. Maybe 
she’d meet him half way. If she had come as far as she 
had, she would come farther. There was every evidence. 

He hesitated some time, however, before he gathered 
the courage to bend over to her side of the table and 
kiss her. Her soul shrank ; she gritted her teeth. From 
the tablecloth Gregory’s brown eyes looked “slick” at 
her. 

“Now why can’t ye” — Mr. Maloney coughed — “have a 
nice, fine little apartment — a swell place of your own; 

sport sealskin and grand clothes ” He bobbed his 

head — “I’m a rich feller ” He dug one hand in his 

pocket while he wobbled in his chair. 

Her heart thundered in her ears. 

“I’m too old to marry — don’t ye know — too — too” — 
he brushed the air away with his hand — “set in my ways.” 
He spread his fat knees farther apart. “But yer a sen- 
sible girl now. I’ll do right by ye ” He coughed. 

She stared at him. What could he mean? 

“There ain’t much to this marriage business anyway 
nowadays. I’ll give you a grand salary — income — sort 

of — and treat you square ” He bent over, his breath 

coming in gusts like a locomotive starting off. A crumb 
of bread was lodged on his lower lip, and his face looked 
terribly bloated. 

Minnie was still not sure she understood, yet she felt 
alarmed. The male in Mr. Maloney rose in a great gust 
of resolution. This time she would not make sport of 
him. He raised his voice to a more compelling pitch. 

“That decency business — rot ” he brought out like 

a thick sneeze “Look at ye ” He pointed at her 


512 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


with his pudgy hand ; “years flying — opportunities — 
betche ye haven’t had a proposal of marriage in a blue 
moon. If a feller like me oilers ye money — comfort ” 

Was he making an indecent proposal? He leaned 
closer to her; she drew away; he grew very red in the 
face and breathed very hard while he looked at her with 
bulging eyes. . . . She felt certain now. A wave of 
humiliation swept upon her. It was as if someone had 
slammed a door in her face. 

“Come on now ” said Mr. Maloney, his fat chest 

heaving. 

She jumped up and without a word left him alone in 
the room. 


LXXIV 

The lights in the Helina Heimath were turned off at 
nine o’clock, and no exception was made when it wel- 
comed back old guests. 

The ward was dark and quiet except for an occasional 
cough, an occasional groan and an occasional call for the 
attendant, who called back “s-sh” or “shut-up” according 
to her mood of the moment. 

Though she was tired, sleep would not come to Min- 
nie. She tossed from side to side. Then, bethinking her- 
self that her restlessness must disturb her neighbor, she 
lay still, staring out of the window. “This is the ‘pur- 
fectly lovely’ view again!” She smiled wistfully. “It 
seems dark and dismal to me. I guess much depends 
upon the point of view.” She gave a fatalistic shrug, 
shifted her position and stared and stared out upon the 
view, which in the night was merged into one blot of 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


5*3 

black. What a somersault her life had taken! In 
ruins lay all her hopes — a sorry mess. She was once 
more a bit of scum of the earth in a Human Job-Lot 
House. Like her mother she had made the ascent and 
the descent. . . . Why? Why? The question tossed in 
her head desperately. But there seemed to be no one to 
whom to put it. Her heart wound itself into a tight knot, 
her lips began to feel drawn as with acid. A sense of 
outrage welled up from the nethermost of her being. 
The world had it so slickly arranged that there was no 
one to ask, no one to challenge, no one to blame. Her 
eyes wandered out into the corridor and then into the 
vast ward opposite where lay thirty other human beings 
cheated and mangled like herself. Above them were 
more, below them were more ; to the right and to the left 

were more. There were more, more, more All over 

the world there were humans, cheated, mangled, like 
these, like herself. Her chest heaved; her eyes blazed; 
her heart vacillated between anguish and disgust. “The 
host who make their march triumphant, trampling us 
down on their way, do so because we let them — because 
we let them. We let them because we have not enough 
spirit to rebel effectively. Poverty is a sin — a vice — a 
wrong — a shame — a disgrace to all of us called civilized. 
The conditions that make it possible must be hewn down 
and swept away. The world must be exterminated or 
readjusted.” 

* * * * * * 

The morning after Minnie's meeting with John Ma- 
loney the maid of the boarding-house had found her ill 
in bed, and the landlady who had had troublesome expe- 
riences with inmates of the skylight room when she had 
been dilatory in summoning a doctor, now sent for one 


5H 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


post-haste. The physician, who saw that proper care 
was not to be had here, despatched Minnie to a hospital 
where her various symptoms were grouped under the 
dignified designation “endocarditis.” After a time, ac- 
cording to the rule of the institution, she was to be trans- 
ferred to a place where patients were kept for protracted 
periods. When the ward physician came to tell her she 
was to be removed to the Helina Heimath and her eyes 
looked amazement and a lividness spread over her face, 
little did he suspect that his whisking her under the chin 
and calling her a “scared little girl” and assuring her she 
would be “all right” in the Helina Heimath was like 
holding up a stick to stay a tornado. How could he pos- 
sibly have suspected when a dignified “all right” said 
nothing of a convulsed heart? Nor had he looked back 
and seen her bury her head in her pillow. 

“The Helina Heimath! The Helina Heimath!” 

The cry had broken upon unattending ears. 

LXXV 

A group of young inmates of the Helina Heimath, 
gathered in the corridor on wheel-chairs, were singing 
lustily : “Those Bells Are Ringing for Me and Mah Girl.” 

Minnie was in her room alone, staring, thinking. It 
was three months since she had come to the Heimath. 
She was over the acute stage of her illness and could be 
up and about. Much to the chagrin of the good-hearted 
authorities, however, she was not “lively.” For instance, 
one never found her among those singing in the corri- 
dors, and one never found her participating in the in- 
stitution’s jollifications, its entertainments, its concerts. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


515 

its parties— magnanimous treats of the Ladies’ Aid So- 
ciety, or parties arranged to punctuate philanthropically 
the birth or wedding of some interested benefactor of 
the Heimath. She was glum, mum, exclusive. She had 
won the title “pessimist” from the authorities. Whether 
they whisked her under the chin, or severely called her to 
task, “pessimist” was always prefixed; and her pessi- 
mism, they had it, was centered upon her physical condi- 
tion ; she delved into minute crevices of her aches and 
pains, emerged with her own gloomy diagnosis, and then 
brooded, brooded, seeing ahead more disease, worse dis- 
ease, the dismal, dark grave. . . . And Minnie, just as 
she had known when she was a child that few could un- 
derstand the subtle reasoning by which she drew the, to 
her, justifiable conclusion that she was an orphan, so she 
now knew that to take these healthy, wholesome beings, 
beings whom life had met half way with its bounty, into 
the secret chambers of her heart and soul would be to 
take them into a country in which they would not know 
their way, which they would declare unfertile for good. 
If she told them what was in her heart, a suffering in 
which personal tragedy and the tragedy of mankind were 
blended, they would hear a voice out of tune; for they 
were living in an harmonious world; they had not been 
mauled and smashed ; their hearts were whole, not broken 
into bits, each of which ached in its own corner for self 
as part of all tragedy. They could not understand the 
maternal tremulousness with which she watched and 
waited for the promised offspring of the World War — 
Democracy ; how hungrily her eyes devoured the daily 
reports; how stirred to its root her soul was each mid- 
night by the infinitely sorrowful notes of Taps, which 


516 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 

from a distant cantonment were wafted across the dark 
expanse into her open window. 

* * * * * * 

It was the day of a party; one of the daughters of a 
Lady of the Aid Society was marrying. The inmates 
of the Heimath should share in the joy. Minnie’s dis- 
inclination to participate was ruled down by the ward 
physician. She was compelled to go. 

Long, narrow tables, which reminded one of loaves of 
stale French bread, were subdivided into tiny spaces upon 
each of which was placed a heavy crockery mug filled 
with mulatto-colored coffee; alongside the mug on the 
oilcloth covering rested a piece of sponge cake. That was 
the treat. When it was devoured, the chic ladies en- 
couraged singing, and soon male and female voices broke 
out into “Johnny Get Your Gun, Get Your Gun, Get 
Your Gun.” 

Minnie sat listlessly back in her chair. The gathering 
receded. She felt herself in a mist. “These poor ghosts,” 
she wondered as she gazed upon the blurred, crippled 
images, “do they realize the night of their existence?” 
Her eyes lighted unexpectedly upon the exquisite real 
lace collar of a lady flitting to and fro. “Does she ever 
stop to think, I wonder, what tragedies may be inter- 
woven in the pattern of that collar ? . . . No, she doesn’t. 
If she did she would not take this party so seriously. She 
would see that it sets no evil right. These women have 
not their blinds completely down on the sufferings of the 
world; they are better, much better than many others. 
But for all their goodnesses how small is their vision! 
They think philanthropy takes the world a step forward ; 
they feel sorry for us but they do not know the weal and 
the woe of mankind.” She had a curious second of de- 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


517 


tachment, during which she was in luxurious quarters 
with Mr. Maloney, and then clear vision again. Beside 
her stood a lady jeweled, overdressed, with a fleshy face. 
She patted Minnie on the head. 

“Sighing again? Thinking again? Why don’t you 
sing — sing with the others? Bad girl ” 

“Bad girl — nice girl in the Helina Heimath ” ran 

through Minnie’s mind. 

“Emma! Emma!” called this lady to another. 

A woman dressed in clothes of tempered elegance, 
beautiful and young, gazed round the room. Her eyes 
lighted up with a smile of recognition. She made her 
way between the tables to the lady at Minnie’s side. 

“Tell me,” the lady, again patting Minnie’s head, said 
to the other, “what shall we do with this girl? She 
mopes and mopes. Never livens up. Eh?” she added 
caressingly, looking down into Minnie’s upturned eyes. 

Minnie flushed with embarrassment and resentment. 
“Shut up !” ran through her mind. She said nothing. 

“The other day,” the lady continued, “I passed her 
room; there she was sitting by the window all hunched 

up ” She spoke slowly, with a rhythm, as if she 

were intoning a lullaby. 

“Mind your business !” rushed through Minnie’s mind, 
while her heart was suffocated by distaste. 

“Reading ‘Looking Backward 

“Aha, instead of being out in the sunshine and play- 
ing with the other young ones,” knowingly chimed in the 
other, in a lovely, soft voice. She smacked her lips, how- 
ever, and drew her face — so that she looked slick 

A convulsive feeling of rebelliousness seemed to wrest 
Minnie’s soul from its lodging. 

“My redeemers! my mentors! Suppose I should tell 


518 SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


them that I don’t like the lines of their clothes, that they 
vulgarly accentuate their figures, they would tell me I’m 
cheeky. They are ladies — I’m a girl in tne Heimath ” 

“Oh, Emma,” called a third. 

The two turned abruptly away. They would not have 
hurt Minnie for the world. But she was left behind 
feeling small, as insignificent as a louse in shaggy wool. 
She grew hot and trembly. She hated life. 

When the summons for dismissal came a moment 
later, she jumped up eagerly. In the way of her hasty 
exit were wheel-chairs — wheel-chairs — wheel-chairs — 
with lame, blind, diseased. 

How she loathed it all ! If she could have hurled these 
people aside — destroyed — exterminated them in one blow, 
she would have done so. “Fools — damn fools !” slapped 
against her brain. “Grateful and ingratiating — hood- 
winked by a bit here and a snip there.” 

She hurried out and, disregardful of the sick, pounding 
heart, rushed to her room, taken by a burning resolution. 
If they would not rebel, she would for herself and them. 
She would rebel for all the world’s poor — she would be 
poor no longer — she would refuse docilely to swell the 
number of the world’s idiots — the world’s fools 

In her room she flung the drawer of her tiny table 
open and took out pen, ink and paper. 

“Dear Mr. Maloney,” she wrote, “I have been sick 
and in the Helina Heimath for six months. I am much 
better now and ready to do as you asked me to if you 
will make me independent.” 

With resolute steps she retraced the corridor to the 
post-box. Her cheeks burned, her eyes, rooted to the 
floor, were glassy like the bottoms of bottles. 

“Mees Mendel!” reached her as through a fog. 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


5*9 

Morris Caplan was on his way to Amelia Rubin, dying 
of cancer, in another ward. 

LXXVI 

One year later Mrs. Ratkin’s eye fell upon a news- 
paper announcement of the marriage of Mildred Mendel 
to Morris Caplan. She could have been knocked over 
with a straw. 

Truth to tell, Mildred Mendel had been much on Mrs. 
Ratkin’s mind, especially since the second choice of her 
very estimable son appealed to her heart even less than 
his first choice. For one thing Yetta Grubicha was not 
a bit better-looking, in fact not as good looking as Mil- 
dred Mendel ; nor had she greater wealth to boast of, nor 
did she hail from better stock. If no arrest of the father 
had occurred, there was a brother, a young boy to be 
sure, serving a term in a penitentiary. Young or old, it 
was no point for boasting. To boot, the Grubichas were 
of Galician stock ! Of the Mendels it could at least be 
said that they were German 

During Abraham’s and Yetta’s short engagement Mrs. 
Ratkin, as she observed what seemed to her their obvious 
incompatibility, had often sighed and shed tears, but this 
time she had resolved not to interfere. She had suffered 
too keenly when Abraham was going through the pangs 
of Minnie’s rejection to be a voluntary agent of another 
such experience for him. 

When Mrs. Ratkin had heard of Sarah’s death, then 
of Minnie’s illness, and later of Leopold Pollack’s death 
a few months after Sarah’s, she had been thrown into a 
state of great awe. A superstitious fear overwhelmed 
her that the two dead ones would intercede with the 


52 ° 


SARAH AND HER DAUGHTER 


Deity to visit disaster upon her progeny. Her daughters 
would remain old maids, Yetta Grubicha would turn out 
to be a demon in disguise, she herself would become lame, 
blind, dumb ! How Mrs. Ratkin suffered in the anticipa- 
tion of this vengeance! Time and again she prayed for 
forgiveness from the harmless Sarah, and begged God's 
blessings upon the poor orphan Minnie, whose qualities 
of refinement, goodness, low-voicedness and especially or- 
phanhood she called earnestly to the good God's atten- 
tion. 

In a great heat of excitement she cut out the announce- 
ment from the newspaper and, donning her street clothes, 
n^ade straight for the home of her children. She ar- 
rived hot, panting and puffing. Scarcely was the greeting 
over, when she rummaged in the bosom of her dress and 
produced the clipping. 

“LOOK !'' she cried to her son. 

Mrs. Ratkin seated herself beside Yetta, who was hold- 
ing a five-months'-old daughter on her lap. Yetta looked 
up at Mrs. Ratkin's raised hand and then at the tiny slip 
and next at Abraham who stood some distance away. 
“Look at mother's piece of paper, dear,” Yetta said to 
him. Abraham stepped over to his mother and, with a 
smile anticipatory of some joke, took the clipping from 
her hand. There was a moment's silence. The smile on 
Abraham’s face faded. He held the clipping down for 
Yetta to read. Mrs. Ratkin transferred her interested 
gaze from Abraham to Yetta. A tiny smile now played 
about Yetta's lips. After reading the announcement, she 
handed it back to Mrs. Ratkin, and looked up at Abra- 
ham. A glance that did not lend itself to Mrs. Ratkin’s 
interpretation passed between the two. Yetta fingered 
the lace yoke of her baby’s dress. In a low voice she 


SARAH’S DAUGHTER 


52i 


said, assuming that manner of hesitancy which was to 
distinguish her remark from unadulterated petty criti- 
cism : 

“Isn’t he the fellow she used to call ‘kike’?” 

A glance of subtle understanding passed between hus- 
band and wife, and they leaned closer to each other. 
Abraham stroked Yetta’s kinky hair, while a peaceful 
feeling of gratitude pervaded his heart for the woman 
God had given him. 

From their attitude Mrs. Ratkin could not decide what 
manner of comment was expected of her. On an impulse 
and as a way out, she grabbed up the granddaughter from 
Yetta’s lap and, dancing her in the air, burst into song. 
“Ei, tiddle, liddle, liddle; ei, tiddle, liddle, um, turn.” 

Yetta clapped her hands. Abraham smiled. 


THE END 


























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